at 1600 pennsylvania avenue at this hour to talk about fiscal cliff issues. at this point, there is no definition on the term wealthy. other reports indicate that the house speaker has also promised to a quick reminder for all figures related to the fiscal cliff go to the special page on our website. there is video of related events and a resource area with documents and links. that is all at c- span.org/fiscalcliff. the house is about to gavel in for the morning speeches. we are hearing they will postpone the debate until 4:30. two bills on the calendar including one regarding gas

drilling. now we will go live to the house floor here and c-span.

guest: pleased to be here. host: you are here to talk about the electoral college. the election wrapped up over a month ago. why are we talking about the electoral college and what happens today? guest: this is the next step in the election. the electoral college is not a place but a process. today is the process where the electors get together in each state, and they go through a complex process. but it is generally managed by the secretary of state or some other officials, and they give their votes for the electors in

that state for a particular president. president obama has 332 electoral college votes and romney has 206. so in the states where romney won, those electors will vote for him. and in -- the next step is for them to send it to six different places in washington, d.c., but the main thing is they send a record of this to the senate. the senate than tallies them, puts them in two mahogany boxes. one box and -- they send it to the house of representatives where they officially open up the boxes and the elopes and at that point, count to see who has won. host: c-span will be covering the meetings in ohio and north carolina and coverage starts at noon eastern time with the ohio electoral college. 53rd meeting in columbus. you can watch the proceedings live from the ohio statehouse senate chamber on c-span 3. we will also be watching north carolina as its electoral college meets and it is all on

our website, c-span.org. go there to find out more. james thurber, does anything unexpected happen when electoral college day occurs? we saw the voting process in november. are electoral college delegates committed? can anything different happen? guest: yes, something different can happen. in 24 states they are required to vote the ticket that they are running on, these electors. so, they cannot be a faithless elector. we had nine cases since 1920 of them. one of them was actually here in washington, d.c., in 2000. she did not vote at all in protest over the fact that washington, d.c., does not have representation in congress. host: if you would like to talk

with james thurber about the electoral college, here are the numbers to call -- the origins of the electoral college. where did it come from and why do we have the system? guest: it goes right to the founding. the founders wanted to not have the congress elect the president. they also wanted also to reflect federalism and states' rights. so, they gave the right to the states to select the presidential candidate from each state. and so, the states in fact have the right to change the way they select the electors. in fact, in two states, nebraska and maine, they have

proportional representation. meaning whoever wins in a particular congressional district gets that vote and whoever wins overall in the states get the two states. by the way, that is the electoral college. 435 state representatives and senators and three in washington, d.c. if we went by strict proportional representation, some people think it would have changed the outcome of this election and other elections -- no. if we have strict proportional representation, obama would have had 282 fewer electoral college votes and romney would have more, 252, but obama would win because you need 270 to win. host: it was established in the 12th amendment, 535 electors in total. usually elected at state conventions and approved by voters. majority of 270 of the electoral votes are required to elect a president and vice president. the number of the state electors equals one for each house member and two for senators the most states except for maine and nebraska have a

winner-take-all system. controversy -- how does it play out? guest: some of the criticisms of the electoral college is that it is really only the democracy in the world that does not have a popular vote for a president, a very powerful office. others that like the electoral college feel that we would be urban-centric -- the urban areas and the big states, new york, california, and illinois, would have to much influence of a think there is a balance. others think that sent the candidates primarily go to these battleground states where it is too close to call to make up the 270 electoral college

votes, that the other states get ignored and it suppresses turnout of therefore it is not good for democracy. so, there have been many amendments over the years. not many recently. they stopped in 1979. there was only one attempted to build this last session, 113th congress, did not go anywhere. many amendments attempted -- many states have innovations which we can talk about later if you like. to change the way they count the votes. host: let's go to the phones and go to casey from atlanta, georgia. caller: good morning. and good morning to your guest. guest: good morning. caller: i believe that this conversation is so enlightening and informative. professor thurber can certainly -- i believe 1988, in the state of west virginia, there was a democratic elector that was pledged for the democratic nominee, governor dukakis.

that democratic elector, when it was time -- and because west virginia did go democrat that year -- i seem to recall that that democratic elector chose not to cast their vote for governor dukakis. and i did not believe this is one of the states where the elector was bound and required to support the nominee. i want to ask if you remember that particular situation. and also, in those states where there is no requirement, is there anything that could happen to an elector for not testing the vote for the candidate they were obligated to support in the first place. and i want to thank you for your time.

guest: thank you for your -- >> we go live to south carolina. >> good morning. it is a great day in south carolina. it is a historic day. we were surprised when senator question. when senator demint told us he would not continue. this is a foundation for i have always been excited for. in this decision and process we went through comment there is no

replacing jim demint. is no one that can fill his shoes. there's no one that can carry on that torch. i think that says a lot about him is as a lot about how he has changed the basis of carolina. this is a new day. it is with great pleasure that i am announcing that i am appointing our next u.s. senator to be congressman, tim scott. [applause] many people have asked what went into this decision process and it was simple. he understands the strength need to have as we continue to focus on jobs. he has shown that with his support knowing the deepening

needs to be there. he has shown courage with this fiscal representation. he knows the value of a dollar. he understands what every family in small business goes through. it also shows that this man of south carolina. he is very aware that what he does and every vote he makes a backstop carolina and our country. it is with that that i knew he was the right person. they understand that this is the right u.s. center for our state and country. it is very important to me as a

minority female that congressman scott earned this seat. he earned this seat before the results he has shown. he earned this seat for what i know he is going to do in making south carolina and our country proud. with that i would like to introduce to you our senate select tim scott. >> thank you very much. this is a great day of celebration. our nation still mourning. of one to take a moment of silence for any town -- newtown. will you join me please? thank you.

this is an exciting day for many reasons. i went to state thank you to my lord and savior jesus christ, to be honest with you. when you start out in a single- parent household with a mom who work 16 hours a day and you're looking at a future that is not look bright and you are living in south carolina, you build a strength that comes from having the understanding that it is not about you. it is about your faith. it is about your family. i love my mother who is here with me. and painful for the good lord who believe sometimes the lord has to come at the end of a switch. she loves me a lot. -- love has to come at the end of a switch. she loves me and a lot. taught civics, spanish, and

english. -- i failed a civics, spanish, and english. my mother did not quit on me. i had the good fortune of meeting a mentor who taught me some very basic biblical business principles. our nation finds itself in a situation where we need to make very difficult decisions. so often we have the conversation about how we create enough revenues for all the problems. if you have a problem is spending there is not enough revenue to make up for it. we have a spending problem. it is very difficult for us to fix the problems in the nation was $16 trillion of debt with an annual deficit of $20 million by

revenue on the top to%. you could take all the revenue any simply cannot close the into a deficit. that is a challenge. senator jim demint has led in a way that few others has led. he has been consistent and transparent. that is why there is no way to have another in america. thankfully we do not lose a jim demint. we saw him going to a bigger opportunity to influence america. i look forward to working with senator lindsey gramm. there is no one else in south carolina. he understands foreign affairs

are real. i look forward to learning more about foreign affairs. i will also say that over the last two years i've had the privilege of gaining a new family. we do not look alike but sometimes we do. everyone from joe wilson who we were to as the scoutmaster -- who we refer to as the scoutmaster and jeff duncan who is not here with us, i have been afforded the great opportunities in the world to serve in the house of representatives. what has made more meaningful is to have served with these four guys and our scoutmaster. i look forward to continue to build. i have not won anything yet in

the senate. i have to run for reelection in 2014. i look for to the opportunity to introduce myself to citizens throughout this great state. the future is incredibly bright for america. we have our challenges. we have things we have to overcome. boy does the future legree in south carolina. we are good together. they're better together. our future will reflect the good opportunities coming to our nation. i wanted to say to the governor, watching her from a distance has been incredible. i cannot imagine the daily pressures of governing this great state. i cannot imagine the areas that

have flowed away all the time. i can see with clarity the conviction and integrity and character that you have given. south carolina is better because we have niki haley as our governor. we have the opportunity to work on making sure our economies in this day continues to hum like an engine and get on a team with nicky haley. thank you very much. >> thank you. now to our conservative rock star for the state of south carolina.

>> when you say there'll never be anyone like me in the senate again, most of washington says thank goodness. i am excited about what is going on today. when the few things i worried about when i was considering leaving the senate was who would replace me. i knew governor haley would put someone in this seat that we would all be proud of and continue to stand for those principles of freedom and opportunity. governor, thank you for your infamous this to our cause and for your good judgment. tim, i cannot be happier today. i appreciate the compliment. i can walk away from the senate knowing someone is in the seat that is better than i am.

that will carry that place of opportunity and conservatism to the whole country anyway i cannot do. and when to keep working. our country needs those positive optimistic voices right now to encourage people that there is a way out of this quagmire we are in in washington. you have the right ideas. i know you will inspire a lot of people. thank you for be willing to do this. i had a mom understood the best ideas were at the end of a switch, too. i want to say few words about senator lindsey gramm is been a good guy to me. sometimes he has been the good guy. we have worked really well together in washington. he is a great senator.

i've been proud to serve with him. i will continue to work with them for my approach over the heritage foundation. i feel the same way you do about our congressional delegation. i cannot be prouder of our state for sending folks to stan in washington and fight for the right ideas. they certainly have a lot of and secretary -- integrity and courage. it has been an honor and privilege to serve people in the united states senate. we are so thankful for the encouragement and support over the years. everywhere we go people say thank you for fighting. we're praying for you. so often i hear people say what can i do? people in this they want to make a difference. it really has inspired me to take that idea all around the

country. i have seen that if we take our case to the american people we can change what happens in washington. it is to assess forward and one step back. wheat change the face of the senate. we have changed things that were so parochial that they interfered with our national good. we have been able to get the conversation moving in the right direction but only because of people all across the nation like people in south carolina who are willing to get engaged, involved and to make a difference. most people agree that our country is on an unsustainable course. last week gov. mitch daniels said the policies will essentially bring our country down. friends of freedom have to be ready with the new infrastructure. the reason i am leaving the

senate is i believe this idea of taking the case as do the american people is something i can do much more effectively from the heritage foundation knowing my seat is filled with someone who will continue to take the stand we need in the senate appeared th. the heritage foundation continues to develop the best ideas that work and to present them all over the country. i have talked to a number of governors since i made this decision to gov.. they realize what the governor is doing is likely to end up with some type of meltdown. all over the country states are implementing these conservative ideas. we see states like michigan join

us. we do not force people to join unions and economies move and want to be a part of what is happening. when you get more parents choices of education, it tells all children, low-income children, we see it all over the country. we can prove it with research prepare. when states have the right for their own energy, the revenues that come into the government help build better roads, better schools, and keep taxes lower. that is an opportunity i hope we can have in south carolina. this could be more efficient and do much better than we can do under the federal area. the principles of freedom are working. we need to spot like them, a showcase them, communicate them so people see that these ideas work. at the same time, they're going

to be able to look to washington and see that the ideas that emplace are dragging us down. when washington hits a wall, the friends of freedom in south carolina and all over the country are going to be ready not with political ideas of american ideas, ideas we now are working that we can show they're working for 100% of americans. that is what i am going to be doing for the next few years. i know that i have a partner now in tim scott as well as linzie graham and i am so grateful for the of the opportunity to serve. i promise you i will keep serving in fighting in the same way you have seen in the past. thank you. [applause]

>> i can tell you one of the things as they travel across the country, everybody wants to know how in the world we got the best federal delegation in the country. all i tell them is a softer line is blessed. we have a great group of legislators they get what we want and the fight for it. they do not just go along with the pack. i am thankful that so many members came here to be supportive of tim. i also want to make sure the we have our senior senator who i enjoyed working with. >> if you add up all the courses, people would begin to understand how the government works. here is the good news. i made 800 on the s.a.t..

don't worry. you're going to do really well. i think we have been doing this for almost 20 years. but there is ever a contest for being over your head. i have really enjoyed your family. you have four great kids and grandkids coming to almost month it seems like. debbie has been a great partner to you. i think life is going to have some stability in have not had before. you started your career as excited and motivated. some people ask me what happened to jim? let me tell you. jim felt the country is not going to change without somebody

making it change. it is out of a sense of frustration that you have to do some things by yourself. i am here to tell you you change things. you are leaving the senate is going to be tough. together we're able to the south carolina on the map. i've enjoyed the experience in taking the issues with our day whether it be at home or washington and try to push the envelope. when you leave i want you to realize that all of us understand you took the road less traveled in washington. it is not your nature to be the only voice. and the fact you're willing to do it shows how much you care about our country and state.

you will be someone who will be listened to because of what he had done for the last four years. you're better off for a. i will miss you. gov. haley, it is like picking a judge. filling a seat had to be tough. just look at the people she could have chosen from. we have a really deep bench in south carolina. you chose wisely. if these walls could talk what would they say? just think of the conversation that happened in this building. during the history of our state. i cannot help but say the obvious. you did earn everything that comes your way. i am proud to see it come.

about him, the pay is the same. i can only imagines how you felt about it. of that work and effort i was so good i never got whipped. that is not true. we and knowledge would you have done. there are so many people like you in this nation. i am sure that stem trounces blessings everyday to have the families and friends he has had. if you do not have a key chain you will by the end of the day. joe is the dean of the delegation. i never met anyone who enjoys his job more.

he and roxanne have raised four grade boys on the military. the men and women in military had a stronger friend then joe wilson. your mind to be the next paul ryan. just keep being who you are. that guy is a wicked smart. he is a problem solver. he will advance the cause on the fiscal side. he will be the next paul ryan. tree comes from the most conservative part of the state. he can roll a punch. he can do it in a way that the colleagues respected. there is no one on legal issues. the way you conduct yourself makes us so proud. jeff past legislation that will make the state independent.

-- energy independent. tom brings to the table problem solving. you understand your district. it has a lot of opportunity. that is the american dream. it brings tied to the delegation. welcome. the only advice i can give you is you got here by tim scott. that will be good for our state. you have a unique opportunity for the conservative cause. i want to help you where i can and anything office can do to help the is started will do. the only a vice i can give you this is he being the good person you are. that's only is he good at being a congressman who will be good

at being a senator. will be a better politician. he can inspire kids in a way you need. you can do more good in any ways and peace legislation. i cannot way to work with you. governor, you are tough. you are one tough lady. you put up with more crap than anybody i know in politics. i just want to be that blunt about it. i want to help you because you are very enthusiastic. i have been around for a while now. i never seen anybody work harder to put our state on the map. you're recruiting some of the most important business enterprises. the whole delegation stands behind you and what you can do to seal the deal.

as to our nation, but these are tough times. 2013 is going to be one heck of a challenge. how do you get the revenue and the spending right? the one thing i can tell you about him is he understands a math. did he spend more than you make you will destroy the american dream. help us outside the body save the american dream. i do not see how young people can do as well as all of us unless we make some changes. we are here and a tough time for this country. we have our back against iraq financially. the world is more dangerous than any time i have -- we have our backs against the wall financially. the world is more dangerous than any time i have seen. there's a thing we cannot do if we continue to work together.

we are a blessed nation. there's no substitute for american leadership. when it comes to trying to explain what america is all about it cannot tell a better story. tim is what america is all about. [applause] >> as you can tell, i am one proud governor, i think we will be one proud state today. i want to thank everybody here. and now with all of our friends in cameras you have questions. we can open it up to anyone. >> [no microphone] >> the one thing the republican party needs to understand is the answer to winning an election is

never about the messenger. it is never about what the messenger of looks like. it is about the message. that is what needs to be understood. the message of what we believe in and letting the market work and being fiscally conservative any cannot continue to raise the debt over and over again and think something will fix it. yet to make sure you are creating pro-business environments. you are seeing south carolina be successful because of results, not because of what the governor looks like. you'll see the u.s. senate become stronger because of the results. he earned a spot. i understand teammate history today. i also believe in the people of south carolina and the people of this country. as the daughter of indian immigrants who saw you can be anything you want to be and

nothing can get in your way, i want to remind everybody that it is not the messenger. it will always be the message. tim scott has the right message. >> if you get the message write and market its well, people listen. america is still a center right nation. the better we get at marketing our investments the market will resonate. fresh faces an office and his city goes a long way. -- and authenticity goes a long way. this message of conservatism will reach the end of this nation in a positive way. i look forward to having an opportunity to think of a message as a have been.

>> [no microphone] >> remember this humble moment. >[laughter] >> what does this mean for you personally? >> 18 years ago the citizens of charleston county give me an opportunity to represent them based on values and issues. a couple years later the folks in the state house seats in an opportunity to represent their issues and values. a few years ago they give me an opportunity to represent their issues in value. i'm not ever really heard, besides the fact or because you are black, here's what we want to do. it is about values and issues.

it speaks to the issue of south carolina and our nation. it speaks to the heart of the good people of our nation and state. more importantly than the complexion i have, that it is more important bring up in a single household. it did not give up on your kids. it may be tough. it all may be challenging. all things may be truly possible in this nation. skyborneeaking to jim climbe any said he did not know what to think. when it comes to things specific to south carolina are delicate works incredibly well as a team. >> [no microphone] >> not if i am smart.

>> if you are elected to senate, have you fill about term limits? >> i believe in term limits. i will certainly have a certain number of terms. the start in the middle, where you go from there? i think 14 years is a good place at this time. a better when the first 1 are the second one. it is a really matter much. my understanding is january the third. >> what you think he can accomplish now that your signature? >> i we put in more miles on my

tires across this state. two years to be reelected by 2014. one of the things we work on will be the same thing in the house. when you look at the problems of our country, they are simply spending problems primarily. we cannot address many of the issues and challenges that really affect americans. that starts at home. the things we can effect in congress is a spending trajectory. when you are boring 42 cents on the dollar to spend your probably on the wrong track. we have a $16 trillion debt you are probably on the wrong track. when your entitlement reform is so far removed, you're definitely on the wrong track. if we are to continue to grow our economy, we're going to have to look at pro-growth principles

and make sure that is the future of america. that is what you have heard so much conversation about raising taxes. you almost overnight eliminate over 700,000 new jobs. over regulatory reform, you're talking about another 800,000 jobs. that is not the right direction. my objective is to start with the conversation of tax reform and spending control. how closely do you identify with the tea party movement? >> i would think that most members are the two-party fiscally. you believe in limited government, lower taxes, and

keeping the government out of your pocket, free markets. those are the basic tenets of the people. that would be a decisive yes. how are some ways they might be a different signature? >> we look at his scorecard with the heritage action. he was 98 and i was closing in on and 80. getting there were a couple of votes that separated us. other than that i'm not quite sure where we disagree. i would think philosophically we're on the same pace. hopefully we will continue to work together. i look forward to hearing more from the center. >> last question. >> [no microphone]

>> i think he would say do not forget it is about going up in life. it is about moving forward. we define that differently. some see the senate as a move up. i certainly do as well in a way. i am hoping that the message the good lord place of my heart is a leap forward. we will have an opportunity to let the message of real hope and opportunity resonates in places where it has not been before. thank you very much. [applause] david weitz mallinckrodt [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> a white house briefing was

scheduled at 12:30 but we hear it has been pushed back to 1:00. we will carry it live when it gets under way. in the meantime, more from this morning's "washington journal/" host: james thurber is our guest with the american university center for congressional and presidential studies of which he is the director and professor. thank you for coming in today. guest: pleased to be here. host: you are here to talk about the electoral college. the election wrapped up over a month ago. why are we talking about the electoral college and what happens today? guest: this is the next step in the election. the electoral college is not a place but a process. today is the process where the electors get together in each state, and they go through a complex process. but it is generally managed by the secretary of state or some other officials, and they give their votes for the electors in that state for a particular president. president obama has 332 electoral college votes and romney has 206.

so in the states where romney won, those electors will vote for him. and in -- the next step is for them to send it to six different places in washington, d.c., but the main thing is they send a record of this to the senate. the senate than tallies them, puts them in two mahogany boxes. one box and -- they send it to the house of representatives where they officially open up the boxes and the elopes and at that point, count to see who has won. host: c-span will be covering the meetings in ohio and north carolina and coverage starts at noon eastern time with the ohio electoral college. 53rd meeting in columbus. you can watch the proceedings live from the ohio statehouse senate chamber on c-span 3. we will also be watching north

carolina as its electoral college meets and it is all on our website, c-span.org. go there to find out more. james thurber, does anything unexpected happen when electoral college day occurs? we saw the voting process in november. are electoral college delegates committed? can anything different happen? guest: yes, something different can happen. in 24 states they are required to vote the ticket that they are running on, these electors. so, they cannot be a faithless elector. we had nine cases since 1920 of them. one of them was actually here in washington, d.c., in 2000. she did not vote at all in protest over the fact that washington, d.c., does not have representation in congress.

host: if you would like to talk with james thurber about the electoral college, here are the numbers to call -- the origins of the electoral college. where did it come from and why do we have the system? guest: it goes right to the founding. the founders wanted to not have the congress elect the president. they also wanted also to reflect federalism and states' rights. so, they gave the right to the states to select the presidential candidate from each state. and so, the states in fact have the right to change the way they select the electors. in fact, in two states, nebraska and maine, they have proportional representation.

meaning whoever wins in a particular congressional district gets that vote and whoever wins overall in the states get the two states. by the way, that is the electoral college. 435 state representatives and senators and three in washington, d.c. if we went by strict proportional representation, some people think it would have changed the outcome of this election and other elections -- no. if we have strict proportional representation, obama would have had 282 fewer electoral college votes and romney would have more, 252, but obama would win because you need 270 to win. host: it was established in the 12th amendment, 535 electors in total. usually elected at state conventions and approved by voters.

majority of 270 of the electoral votes are required to elect a president and vice president. the number of the state electors equals one for each house member and two for senators the most states except for maine and nebraska have a winner-take- all system. controversy -- how does it play out? guest: some of the criticisms of the electoral college is that it is really only the democracy in the world that does not have a popular vote for a president, a very powerful office. others that like the electoral college feel that we would be urban-centric -- the urban areas and the big states, new york, california, and illinois, would have to much influence of a think there is a balance. others think that sent the candidates primarily go to these battleground states where it is too close to call to make up the 270 electoral college votes, that the other states get

ignored and it suppresses turnout of therefore it is not good for democracy. so, there have been many amendments over the years. not many recently. they stopped in 1979. there was only one attempted to build this last session, 113th congress, did not go anywhere. many amendments attempted -- many states have innovations which we can talk about later if you like. to change the way they count the votes. host: let's go to the phones

and go to casey from atlanta, georgia. caller: good morning. and good morning to your guest. guest: good morning. caller: i believe that this conversation is so enlightening and informative. professor thurber can certainly -- i believe 1988, in the state of west virginia, there was a democratic elector that was pledged for the democratic nominee, governor dukakis. that democratic elector, when it was time -- and because west virginia did go democrat that year -- i seem to recall that that democratic elector chose not to cast their vote for governor dukakis. and i did not believe this is one of the states where the elector was bound and required to support the nominee. i want to ask if you remember that particular situation. and also, in those states where there is no requirement, is there anything that could happen to an elector for not testing

the vote for the candidate they were obligated to support in the first place. and i want to thank you for your time. guest: thank you for your question. sounds like you are a historian. you got it right. there was a faithless elector in west virginia. nothing happened to the individual and except for the fact he could never be an elector again and obviously -- probably got marginalized within the democratic party for doing that. there are rules in 24 states that you are required by law to do this. of the 9 faithless elector, one was in west virginia. since 1920, none of those electors had affected the outcome of the election. what is the impact on the individual? they are ostracized from the party. they are pushed out of the

party. they are not trusted any more. because it is a matter of trust when the parties select to the electors will be. you have an excellent memory, sir. host: karen from upper marlboro, maryland. independent line. caller: two questions. who picks the of the poor -- the electoral votes. and why is it not that the people -- [indiscernible] the tangible information we have in our possession. we act like we are a country that is not a modernized country. in another country if it does not evoke they revote -- here the votes are not counted until later on. guest: request and a lot of people ask, especially when

there is a close election that is a question a lot of people s, especially after a close election like 2000. selecting electors is done by the party organization in each state. they select people who are not public officials. that is in the law. they select people who represent the party, who are trusted. who are usually activists in the party, the democratic and republican party. third-party electors are rare, but that part of their selects them also and indeed there is a criticism of the system being one step away from the people. what you are really voting for going to the ballot are the electors for president obama on mitt romney. not necessarily collecting them or the vice presidential candidate. by the way, the votes by the electors are separate for the

president and vice president. two votes. >> will take you live to the white house for the briefing is supposed to happen. here's another portion of today's "washington journal." are guest is david. he serves as the homeland security and justice issues director. we're talking about homeland's security. >> they are a whole suite of grants to local governments to help them prepare for terrorist

attacks and natural disasters. the >> give us some of the details. the specific number varies from year to year. the largest are formula grants that goes to state and urban areas. altogether at the federal government spends a lot of money is on these programs. as much as $38 billion. we're talking about a price tag of $30 billion from 2002-2011. why spend money to the states? mabus should go to state government and state

government can handle it, they should go to the federal government for help. these grants are to bolster state and local government to handle problems on their own without having to reach backguem from day one. at the work we have then we have found significant challenges and problems in the department of homeless secured his ability to assess whether the grants are making decisions. host: give us a sense of what's gao's role in looking and examine how federal dollars are spent. guest: we are part of congress, independent nonpartisan agency built into the legislative grant and our role is to conduct independent oversight on how federal agencies spend money. we do work at the request of congressional committees as well

as legal mandates under law. we independently report the results of those studies to congress and the american public. host: here's a recent story from "the baltimore sun." host: this story is talking

about something different than what gao did. but one thing that was found as fargo, north dakota, got more than $8 million and homeland security grants. you can see what they decided to do what their money. an armored truck with a rotating gun toward using the homeland security funds. justification? guest: biscuits to one of the central problems for these grants in general or specifically the program senator coburn wrote about, which is, who decides what to spend money on? the concept is the local communities with the snow and the federal government should stay out. one of the problems is you end up with results like this. situations where local communities in new hampshire brought armored vehicles ultimately used to protect pumpkin festivals. in columbus, ohio, they bought a seat by an underwater submersible. does not seem to be directly directing the highest needs -- for terrorist attacks are

responding to a natural disaster. host: an image of something purchase by a department in kansas city. bomb detection robot despite already having two. local officials on that one of the broken robot set largely unused four years brought brought it back on line after two high schoolers were asked to repaired which they did for only $5. hines from louisiana. good morning. caller: i have a question, as far as these grants for security threats do you do they apply to united states trust territories like micronesia -- micronesia, close to china, or is it just for the 50 states. guest: a really good question they apply to of the federated territories as well and for some of the grant programs there are statutory minimum amounts that have to be provided for the different territories.

join the conversation and talked to david maurer about a homeland security grants to states, here are the numbers to call. what formula did the grant programs follow went looking to get out the money? what do they have to do? guest: it varies from program to program, but generally speaking, as a first cut, dhs takes into consideration the risk. in other words, it wants to provide the money more toward portions of the country where there is a greater risk of attack or natural disaster. secondly, we look at capabilities. how capable are the state and local governments already. those that are less capable should get additional funding. and third, they look of the types of project that they are applying for. one of the interesting thing

about the third step isthe state and local governments do not apply untypically for specific projects, but sometimes a package of projects. -- typically for specific projects but sometimes a package host: jim in indiana on the democrat's line. caller: i'm wondering, since this past school shooting why we are not able to aggressively put metal detectors before the entry to a school. like the prison systems do. you cannot get inside with a gun. but a few aggressively approach somebody on the outside where they have to go through a metal detector before they can even reach a building, why don't we think of something like that to prevent people from getting inside to kill our guest: kids that is a very topical question -- to kill our kids? guest: that is a very topical question, given what has just happen. there are programs typically provided by jurisdictions.

they make different decisions of rafa security procedures are adopted at local schools. it varies across the country. host: here is a question from max. how much are we wasting these funds? guest: that is a good question. one of the major challenges we face and assessing the programs is there is not a good framework in place to determine whether or not someone is doing a good job with the money or a bad job. some of the examples that we talked about earlier in the show would seem to indicate issues, or spending that is not in the best interest of the taxpayer. but globally speaking, fema and more broadly in the department of homeland security, we have not developed a framework to measure the success or failure. that makes it difficult. to determine what is waste and what is not. host: let's go to jean in new

hampshire. independent caller. caller: i was just asking where the money comes from. where does that come from, the millions of dollars in waste? host: do you want to be more specific? caller: the conferences, the gao conferences. guest: that is a good question. let me make something clear right off. there was a scandal with conferences. there was a fellow agent in the general services at agency, the gsa. the gao was not involved in that. i am very pleased to say. but more broadly, when it comes to these conferences, many of the programs to allow participants to participate in conferences. the concept is that state and local governments are tracking those expenditures to make sure

they are done appropriately. host: one of the grants that have been used by dhs with a halo counter-terrorism summit in 2012. it was held at the paradise point resort on an island outside san diego. it was a five-day summit and was deemed allowable by dhs. permitting first responders to use grant funds for the $1,000 entrance fee. it talks about a luxury area and then it goes through and details other things that were happening at this. the marquee event was the highly anticipated apocalypse demonstration. -- zombie apocalypse. and there was a zombie-driven show designed to simulate a real live terrorism event.

you can see some pictures of that. guest: it is interesting to find our what federal taxpayer money goes toward. i read about this in senator coburn's report. i have a lot of questions about that. but it is an illustrative example of who decides where the money is spent. the willoughby of the federal level or the local level? -- will be decided at the federal level or the local level. this assumption that was decided a the local level. this was something decided that the local level. the way this typically works is that the recipient of the money generally informs dhs what they're going to spend the money on. they will say, we will have a conference or an exercise. they do not typically report specifically what they spend the money on a job afterward. this can be a problem. host: here is a tweet saying, homeland security grant is just a modern day term for your marks. -- earmarks.

sharing his opinion. let's go to pat. caller: you stole my thunder with those of the question -- with the zombie question because that was mine. but are also interested if you can put on a zombie demonstration and be precluded from putting on a jihadist muslim scenarios. is the politically incorrect? guest: generally speaking, there are a number of different training exercises conducted diyala across the state and local and federal levels at a variety of different areas. you want to make sure they are prepared and exercise cultural -- appropriate and the exercise cultural sensitivity. but you want to make sure they are realistic scenarios. host: laura asks, why is it anything done after the

issuance of gao reports? piece she says, good reports that lead to no actions. guest: in most cases, action is taken in response to our recommendations. one of the things that we track globally as a percentage of our recommendations that are implemented. every year, it is about 75%, which is a good track record. more specifically to the realm of dhs grand program and a report that was issued in 2011, we recommended to congress that it consider cutting funding for dhs grant programs until dhs is better prepared to determine the overall impact and success of the programs. congress took us up on that. host: anthony, mount sinai, new york. caller: i would ask c-span to

urge brian lamm to come back to fridays. we miss him very much. it seems we are on collapse over of a security that we are being provided with, whether the marines, navy, coast guard, fbi, cia, and s.a., a local police enforcement, code enforcement, sheriff, highway patrol, national guard, airport and transportation security, board patrol, fire marshal -- i mean, is an over abundance. we have become a police state and it has destroyed the fabric of our society. i do not see how we will get out of it. i do not see how home and security is going to save us. -- the disaster in fukushima, i do not see how homeland security is going to save us from that. guest: there is a veritable alphabet soup of all these to organizations that are designed to address a wide variety of security issues at the federal level and local level as well as overseas.

and congress, just on the street from the studios we are in today, are talking about the fiscal cliff and how much money the government should spend on security matters. that is an important part of the conversation. host: david maurer is part of the homeland security office. -- government accountability office where he serves as homeland security and justice issues director. let's look at a couple of the key areas in the grant program. one is the state security grant program. -- state homeland security program. and the other is urban areas initiative. tellus what they are and why they matter. guest: the concept is fema will -- it is designed to give money to states and the states pass them to local communities. the concept is fema will determine what capabilities to the states need to change. -- to achieve. what level are they at? what money should go to fund the gaps? but the states make the decisions about what localities

get the money and what the lookout is will spend it on. -- localities will specifically spend it all. the urban program is designed specifically to address terrorism threats and is designed to help multiple jurisdictions in urban areas to prepare for and respond to terrorist attacks. a large portion of the urban population is in the u.s. are multinational, like washington, -- multi-jurisdictional, in washington, d.c. -- d.c. and we need to know how to respond to terrorism. there is,, virginia, and montgomery county, which is maryland. host: in this figure, we see some of the biggest states in red. california and new york, and then the color scheme goes down from their depending on how much money they've gotten parents why california -- they've gotten. why california and new york? is it because they are such big urban areas? guest: it is a combination of daud and also because of the world trade center bombing.

it is a major terrorist target. it was targeted back in 1997 built first world trade center bombing. in california, you have a large population centers. you also have one of the largest and most important ports in the long beach area. there is another program specifically designed to enhance port security. and a lot of that money goes to that port. host:host: $98,000 was spent on an underwater robot in columbus, ohio. is it harder for urban areas outside of metropolitan areas to justify the grants and find ways to use them? are there hurdles in getting money or not? guest: generally speaking, it tends to go to the larger jurisdictions, because as you would imagine, those are the ones at the greatest risk and potential targets for terrorists.

most of the money would go to places like new york, chicago, miami, los angeles, dallas, places like that. however, over the years, some smaller areas have been able to receive some money. columbus is an illustrative case of that. host: barbara on the independent line. caller: there have been security breaches at nuclear plants. people coming in that were not employees. what kind of funds are going to be provided for states with nuclear plants against terrorism attacks? guest: that is one of the key focuses of dhs grants, as you correctly point out. a nuclear facility presents a tempting target for potential terrorist attack. the good news is that dhs is aware of that and is working to help state address that.

>> we leave this portion of "washington journal" and take you live to the white house where today's press briefing is getting under way. >> we will get settled here. ok. good afternoon, everyone. thanks for being here. i think, as you know, the president and speaker of the house had a meeting here at the white house a little earlier today. the conversations continue. i have no read-out of the meeting to provide. although i am sure you will ask for one. with that, i will take your questions. >> want to ask you about gun violence. the president made an impassioned plea for the nation to do more to protect its children.

i want to try to get a little more specific about what you mean -- when he talks about using the power of his office, using the power of the president's office. >> i appreciate the question. the president spoke last night at the vigil in newtown and he spoke about the fact that the families of new town is not unknown. and he also spoke about the fact that the kind of violence that occurred in newtown occurs too often in this country. although what we saw in newtown was particularly horrific. he said that in the coming weeks he would use the power of his office to engage the american people and the lawmakers, law-enforcement, mental health experts,

educators, and others, in an effort to try and prevent these kinds of terrible tragedies from happening in the future. it is a complex problem that will require a complex solution. no single piece of legislation, no single action will fully address the problem. so, i don't have a specific agenda to announce to you today. i would simply point you to what the president said last night about moving forward in the coming weeks. and i would look for him -- >> do you think it is fair and accurate to say that addressing gun violence, gun control, is part of it? >> i think it is part of it, but

it is far from all of it. as you know, the president has taken positions on a common- sense measures that he believes should be taken to help address this problem. but he made clear that more needs to be done, that we as a nation have not done and not clearly to fulfil our number one obligation, which is to protect our children. >> as you know, we have seen these horrific moments, and ago, the debate about gun safety, children safety, goes with it. does the president think he needs to capitalize on this and see some action in the short term, or does he feel like if he gets through fiscal cliff and immigration -- a mindset to get it done down the line? >> i do not have a specific time line about what the president

will do moving forward. i will simply refer you to his remarks last night when he talked about the action he hoped to take to engage the american people in the coming weeks. i think that what happened at sandy hook elementary has clearly shocked the entire nation and has laid bare the necessity of evaluating the various things that we can and must do as a nation to try to better protect our children. >> quickly on fiscal cliff -- the president said at the business roundtable recently that a republican needs but because a conceptual breakthrough on rates coming up. does he feel he has that now that speaker boehner is talking about rates?

>> i won't comment on specifics reported proposals or counterproposals, on internal conversations between the president and speaker or the president's team and the speaker's theme or with other members of leadership. the president's insistence that rates need to go up on the top 2% was based on an economic reality, which is that in order to achieve a broad deficit reduction package that puts our economy on a sustainable fiscal path in the future a certain level of revenue gleaned from the wealthy has to be met. and the only way to do this was through, in part, rates rising. that remains his position. so, we have seen since the

election, a change in tone, and in some cases, a change in position from the republicans, including elected republicans, on the issue of first revenue and then acknowledging that rates have to go up. but thus far the president's proposal is the only proposal that we have seen that achieves the balance that is necessary. and the balance is important because a plan that does not have it does -- puts undue leap the burden on senior citizens -- unduly the burden on senior citizens or middle-class americans or parents with disabled children. and that is not acceptable. balance is essential because in order to move forward in a way to protect the middle class we need to have the package include a kind of revenue that the president is talking about. >> the president campaigned on taxes going up on households

making over $250,000. it is -- when you were asked about the threshold of the summer you say the president' asset for a long time it has not changed and it will not change. i do not -- i know you did not want to talk about boehner's proposal of 1 million -- but the president's stand, is it still $250,000 is the threshold? >> i will say what i said many times from here in recent weeks and months, which is that the only plan that we have seen that achieves the size and the balance required for sustainable, for long-term deficit reduction and putting our economy on a sustainable fiscal path is the president's. an important element of that on the revenue side is allowing current law, when it comes to the top 2%, to remain in place, which would see rates on of those wealthy americans rise,

even as we extend, and in the president's mind, make permanent the tax cuts for 90% of the american people, the other 90% -- 98% of the american people. his position is not based on the notion that the rates have to go up because it is good in and of itself. it is based on the necessity of having another revenue as part of the balanced package, and revenue only, from the wealthiest americans, those who can afford most, to ensure we are not unduly putting the burden on the middle-class or seniors or families with children with disabilities. that and the underlying premise the president has always had, and they put the foundation -- and that has been the foundation of the proposal put forth. let's make it up here. >> on the incoming prime

minister. instead of visiting china first, he says he would like to visit the u.s. first early next year. what is the president's expectation of the visit. also he said he would like to stop the challenge from china over the disputed islands. will the u.s. support that division? >> first of all we would like to congratulate liberal democratic party presidential and so i -- election.'s the u.s.-japan airlines serves as a cornerstone of peace and prosperity in the asia-pacific and look forward to working closely with the new japanese prime minister, cabinet, and the people of japan for bilateral, regional, and global issues. i would also like to say the president appreciates prime minister nota's contributions to u.s.-japan relations on a number of issues and would like to thank the prime minister for his

service and wish him well in his future endeavors. as you know, the new prime minister does not take office -- and i did not want to get ahead of that, before we start talking about potential meetings or policy discussions with him. >> you made the point about -- that that was not the day to talk about policy, talking about gun control. but we are looking for more specifics especially since the president said quite plainly he would use all the powers of the office to engage americans on the issue. senator lieberman suggested a national commission on violence. would the president consider setting up a presidential task force? >> what i think is important to note is what the president said about the actions he intends to take in the coming weeks to engage the american people in

efforts to try to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening in the future, and to engage broadly -- lawmakers, law enforcement officials, mental health professionals, and educators -- because this is a complex problem that requires many solutions, not just one. and i don't have a series of proposals to prevent to you. the president spoke yesterday about moving forward in the coming weeks. again, i will not ruled in or out specific proposals. i think broadly speaking it is a reflection of the tragedy in newtown and the horrific nature that both elected officials and others are thinking broadly about ways we can move forward. and that is a good thing. and being thoughtful in the

approach. because it is generally important as we move forward on this not to get in a situation where anybody retreat to the usual corner or starts issuing the usual talking points. i think it is important that we all recognize that we need to change the situation in this country that has led to too many senseless deaths of american children. >> it is said on friday as well the president remains committee -- committed to work to reinstate the ban on assault weapons sales. senator feinstein said this week and she would come back from holidays next year with a new congress and will have a proposal. well the president and white house support that effort? >> again, i would not engage in specific point-by-point proposals and dissidents, but the president has long supporter reinstating the assault weapons

ban that in -- expired in 2004. as the president said and i have said, this is a complex problem that requires complex and a variety of solutions. i do not have a specific policy outline from the president. i think it is important that this is about our gun laws and enforcing them, but also about a broader series of issues, including issues of mental health, education, and the like. so, the president's position on assad weapons ban has not changed. he still supports the re- enactment. but you will hear from him, i think, as he said last night, in the coming weeks to speak more specifically about what he thinks we should do moving forward. >> sorry, what, if any, concern does the president have that fellow democrats as well as some republicans will be hesitant in

the face of opposition from the gun lobby, that they will feel intimidated and not go forward with actions? >> again, i think we all recognize that this is a complex problem, and there are obstacles to taking action, coming from a variety of places. what the president hopes, as you heard him say last night, is everyone steps back and looks at the situation that has to be addressed. and thinks broadly and thoughtfully about how we can move forward. and he certainly hopes this will happen. >> back to the fiscal cliff. is there concern on the part of the white house, given the reaction some conservative groups have had over the offer from the speaker, very negative

reaction from some quarters, it could get us to a situation if you push the speaker 24 you get an agreement from him but it becomes moot because he cannot pass it in the house. how do you balance that? >> john boehner is the speaker of the house, he is the leader of the house of representatives, leader of the house republican conference and i believe the third most powerful elected official in the land. so, i won't tell him, and we won't tell him what his politics are or how he should work with his conference. but we are obviously engaged in conversations with the speaker and his staff and other leadership members, and believe that the parameters of an agreement have been and are clear. it requires balance, in our view. it requires a deal that does not unduly but the burden on seniors are middle-class americans or

families with children with disabilities or kids trying to go to college. and on the issue of revenues, it is absolutely a fact that rates will go up on the top 2%. again, i am not addressing specific proposals and reactions to proposals. but it has always been the president's position that we need to extend tax cuts for 98% of american people, a position republicans and democrats alike support. and the president has been arguing for months now, that the house ought to simply pass that senate bill that gives it a certainty that it would give to the middle class, that their taxes will not go up january 1. and we can discuss the issue of tax rates for the remaining 2%, the top 2% in the united states. the purpose broadly is for

balance. and the president has always said that part of this is revenue and part of it is spending cuts. and he is willing to make tough choices on the issue of spending cuts. and that remains the case. so, any potential agreements would not only have to align with the president's principles, but it would require tough choices by both sides, including of the president and including republicans. and that is the only way it could come together. >> is the goal here to get the best deal you can from the speaker or bank of the best deal you can get through the house? >> the best deal we can sign into law for the american people. and there are very principles the president has laid out. one is that we will not -- he will not sign into law an

extension of the bush era tax cuts for the top 2%. he will not. he would veto any legislation that got to his desk that extended those tax cuts for the top 2%. any deal that attempted to reduce the deficit brought before the long term, a bigger deal that he has been seeking, has to be balanced. it has to have enough revenue from those who can afford it and a mix of spending cuts that the not unduly but the burden on the seniors or middle-class or students or families who have children with disabilities. these are the fundamental parameters that the president has brought with him in these conversations. he believes that a deal is possible. he believes that it would be a good thing for the economy if we were to get a deal that met

those parameters, and also allowed us to continue to invest in key areas of our economy. because the purpose, by the way -- to avoid the fiscal cliff -- in addition to avoid the fiscal cliff, to avoid a situation that would affect our potential to continue to create jobs. the second issue is engaging in long term deficit reduction in a way that allows the economy to grow faster and create jobs more quickly. these are big goals, lofty goals, but important. >> we realize there is sort of a pattern to the public engagement following a shooting spree first there is a lot of shock and outrage, but then overtime it sort of gives way to, i guess, people have been less concerned than they did. in light of that, isn't it more likely that people retreat to

their corners, which you say you don't want to see, the farther out from this event? >> the president mentioned yesterday that he would, in the coming weeks, use the power of his office to try to engage the american people and lawmakers and law enforcement officials and mental-health experts and others in an effort to try to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening again. and he will do that. on the first part of your question, i think that it is hard to imagine people in any near term somehow for getting -- forgetting the rawness of what

happened friday. it is hard -- to think about 20 6 or 7-year-olds and what happened friday and imagine in a few weeks or a few months that pain would not still be incredibly intense and present. i think it is probably true for everyone in this room and i suspect it is true for the vast majority of people in washington and around the country. so, what happened was both consistent unfortunately with a series of events that have been happening in the united states, but also exceptional in his horrendous this. >> does he feel that and beijing right now is counterproductive or inappropriate and light of the fact that obviously he feels

that this is different, that somehow this pushes -- >> i think the president spoke about this from the heart with great passion and conviction just last night. so, the idea that he is not engaging in this at present does not explain the speech that he gave last night. i just don't have a series of specific steps. >> how you said it is not the time to push specific policy prescriptions -- >> i said on friday at the time remember when there were still bodies in the school. the president has spoken twice since then. you know, you heard him speak about what he plans to do in the coming weeks just last month. so, i will leave it to him to

follow what he said he would do. again, that is in the coming weeks. john christopher and then peter. >> in the aftermath of what happened friday, and the president's two speeches, does this issue of series gun-control legislation, is it still the third rail of politics for a democrat? >> i am not going to engage in political analysis. there have been challenges to moving forward on a variety of issues that relate to the problem with gun violence in america. and there is no question that the complexity of the problem and the complexity of a bus solutions " -- of the solutions

mean there will be obstacles moving forward. but i am not going to speculate on how it might play out and the future. again, i don't have a specific set of proposals to discuss with you today, at least on the president's perspective. >> the last four years as president he has been a consoling communities, now four times -- or warwick, arizona, fort hood and now in connecticut. in 2008 he pledged i think that the dnc that he would keep ak- 47's out of criminal and an advocate it reinstating the assault weapons ban. what does the president say to americans in communities like when he visited yesterday why nothing more has happened yet? >> the president's support for reinstatement of the assault weapons ban has been the case

ever since it expired, and has been true for the past several years. the fact is, we have taken steps to include background checks, which those at the issue preventing those that should not have guns from acquiring them. but as you heard the president said last night, we all need to do more. we must change. we must take more action and a greater action to address this problem. because we have not adequately, it in his view, -- in his view, of taking care of our first priority, and this case, taking care of our children. he committed himself, as you heard him last night say, to use the power of his office to help us bring about the change.

and he will do that in a way that is inclusive because it requires more than a president. it requires more than a gun laws and more than legislation. so, he will engage in a process that encompasses a lot of different communities and potential actions. >> americans who say the president should have done more in four years -- they point to that he signed bills allowing guns on national parks and amtrak and saying why is the conversation starting only now? should he have done more? >> a lot of people over the course of the presidency heard the president speak about these tragedies and about taking common-sense measures to deal with gun violence and prevent those who should not have weapons from acquiring them. and we have taken some actions.

but there is no question, as the president said last night, we need to change, and we need to do more. and he is committed to doing it. george. >> combating gun violence moving up on the president's legislative agenda. how do you keep it from distracting from jobs, the economy, the way critics said the health care dead in the first term. >> i think you're getting way ahead of your self. we have a lot of priorities as a nation. this president will work on a series of issues that he considers priorities for the nation. and i think that we all as a country need to have the bandwidth to move forward on all of them. he certainly will do that. >> as legislative items go, is

this now a priority? >> i will not rank priorities. this is clearly extremely important. >> made it sound like this is the most and pour in thing on the nation's agenda. >> i will not rank priorities. the president just met with the speaker of the house with continue discussions on the fiscal cliff and getting our deficit under control. we have the priority of immigration reform. we have a further steps we need to pay for economic growth and job creation -- and need to take for economic growth and job creation and we need to take action to address the problem and skirts of gun violence in america. we need to do all of it. and this president is committed to just that. but the other topics -- benghazi. the state department said secretary clinton received the report from the review board. can you give us the idea of when you expect the president may receive that and what kind of action the white house may take to prevent another terror event?

>> i don't have a timetable for you in terms of that process, when the report moves from the state department. the president has looked forward to the review board to work as he looks forward to the completion of the investigation by the fbi. so it is hard to say what action he will take because we have not seen the reports. >> the fbi is still investigating as well. do you have any sense the last time the president got an update from the fbi as to where their investigation of benghazi stance. also, secretary clinton has been ill obviously and no one would expect to testify right now but is the administration committed to have her testify before she leaves office? >> i would ask the state department about her schedule and her illness that she is dealing with.

but i certainly am not aware of any updates the president has got in on an investigation. >> last night the president said in his speech -- are we prepared to say this violence visited on our children year after year is the price of our freedom? when he referred to our freedom, was he referring to gun rights, was he referring to the difficulty some societies have when it comes to committing people against their will? what exactly did he mean by freedom? >> well, i think he meant broadly those and other issues. that we obviously have a society that is one based on laws, but it is a free society that creates a balance between the laws we must abide and the

freedoms we enjoy. again, i am not going to get -- they both could be encompassed within the meaning of what he said. and other issues of freedom and responsibility is more broadly. so, it was not a single specific meaning. i think it was broader than that. >> the president has been focused on the health care system in this country since he took office. does he feel that the mental health care system in this country is adequate? >> it is a very good question and i would say the obama administration has taken action for the past four years to ensure more americans have access to mental health services. we will continue to work with leaders across the country to make sure people get the care and treatment they need. as you know, the affordable care act will ensure that 30 million more americans have access to health care, including mental health services, and the law makes recommended health services available without a co pay were deductible.

one of the reasons why the president explicitly talked about engaging not just with lawmakers and law enforcement officials and educators but mental health experts is clearly it is a factor that needs to be addressed. in some of these cases of horrific violence. so, what the affordable care act has done, obamacare, if you will, has ensured that mental health services are integral and part of the services that the 30 million people who -- additional americans who will have insurance because of the affordable care act -- will receive. in terms of the recommended services, will see them without a copay or deductible. i think it reflects the administration's view on how important mental health services are. but when it comes to this broader -- or rather this more specific issue of mental health

and the kind of violence we saw in newtown, he believes it is important that experts in that field are part of this discussion. >> after the tucson shooting that left congressman gabby giffords is fiercely wounded and six others, including a little girl, the president wrote an op- ed piece in 2011, talking about the restrictions he favored. he said the laws on the books should be enforced more when it comes to background checks. it relies on data from the states but it is often incomplete and inadequate. rewarding the states that provide the best data. and make the system faster and nimbler. that was almost two years ago. what is the progress? >> i would refer you to the justice department for specifics but we have taken steps

specifically on the issue of background checks to make the system more fair row and complete. but -- thorough and complete. the key component to enforcing existing laws, when properly enforced cannot allow weapons to fall into the hands of those who should not have them. under existing law. that is an important component. we have taken steps, and i am sure that will be part of a broader discussion moving forward. but it is an issue that we have taken steps on because of the background check system, making it more complete and thorough. >> and the october presidential debate, the president said weapon design for soldiers in war fears the not belong on the streets. can you name one thing the president has done the last four years to remove weapons of war from the streets? >> there is no question, jake, the surge of gun violence is a problem that has not been

sufficiently addressed because, as we saw in newtown, we continue to have horrific tragedy is that result in innocent victims. the president supports the assault weapons ban and its reinstatement. >> one measure, one act -- one to remove the weapons of war he talks about? >> again, he supports legislation that is designed to ban some weapons. but as you know, this is a complex issue. and it requires complex solutions. and he looks forward to engaging the american people in an effort to do more. as he made clear last night, we need to change. we have not done enough -- we as a nation. and we -- he will in coming weeks use the power of his office to help make the change.

>> speaking of the power of his office. in the present can pull together resources at his direction, options and policies -- has he sent friday asked hhs, justice department or anyone to form a task force or to anything to bring to him by the new ideas, research, data, anything to address what you described the complex problem that requires complex solutions? >> i am not going to get into internal policy deliberations. >> not asking about deliberations -- has the ask for things to be assembled? >> that would be an internal policy deliberation, to make those kinds of request or to compile those kinds of proposals. the president looks forward, as he said last night, to engaging with the american public in the coming weeks in an effort to try to prevent these kinds of tragedies from happening in the future and engaged broadly -- not just with lawmakers on

legislation related to guns, but broadly on all of the issues that are in play here that affect this verge of gun violence. >> michael bloomberg on friday and joe catafano said it time is of the essence. does the present disagree? there is a clamor in some quarters to move more rapidly on one particular issue -- not the wide complex range but this issue, gun-control and specifically. does the president disagree with that assessment? a matter of timing, policy? >> i think you heard the president say and used the phrase in the coming weeks. he did not talk about months or years, but the coming weeks. but that is not specific to any one particular avenue of pursuit. again, the laws of part of this but they are not the only part of this. -- gun laws are part of this but not the only part of this. as anyone who is truly an expert

on these issues can tell you. but he will -- and i will cite him again from last night -- will engaged in an effort in the coming weeks to bring an array of people in the american public and move forward in this effort to try to prevent these tragedies from happening again. there is no single legislation, no single bill that has been written, that has been enacted and inspired that alone solved this problem. that is why you have to take a broader approach. >> over the weekend, through conversations on the hill and this building, it has been suggested to many of us that some genuine progress has been achieved on the fiscal cliff. that things are not where they were a week ago, either atmospherically -- broadly

speaking, would you agree that this process is in a different place than it was a week ago, and, not predicting anything of the future, that is a connecticut number of issues have been at least dealt with and we may be closer than we were say a week ago? >> without going into the details of the conversations, i think it is fair to say we have continued to engage in communications with the speaker's office and his staff and other leaders and their staffs. and the president believes that the parameters of a potential agreement are clear. it is also the case that we have not seen a proposal besides the president's that gives the balance the president insists be part of a deal. and because we can't have a situation where deficit reduction is born unduly or primarily by the middle class or

by seniors or families with children who have disabilities are kids trying to go to school. so, i am not going to characterize discussions beyond that. they have been, as i said in the past, frank and direct and deliberate. and that remains the case. but our goal here is to have an environment that maximizes the possibility of an agreement that works for the american people and achieves the goals the president has laid out. >> thank you. back in the summer of 2011, the president at least considered the different -- a different inflation measure, slowing the pace of adjustment. but in the package on september 19 -- [indiscernible]

can you tell us today what of the president's thinking has changed? >> i will not get into the specific policy proposals. the principles the president brought forward are clear. the spending cuts he put forward are clear and specific, as are the revenue ideas he has put forward. as i have said in the past, he is prepared to make tough choices. he also understands that his bill will not, as written, likely be what the final compromise, if there is one, looks like. but he insists and will insist before he signs any thing that there is the balance that he seeks, that it is fair, and that

the seniors are not bearing the burdens of the well thing -- and the wealthy bear less, those who can afford it befar less. but the middle-class is not stuck holding the bag so the wealthiest pay less. that is not a balance the president thinks is fair to the people and not one that makes economic sense in the long term. >> would you conclude that -- [inaudible] >> i will not get into the specifics of the conversation or the proposals that may or may not have been put forward as part of the principles i have outlined for guiding the president now. >> spot. >> asking you about speaker boehner's ability to bring republicans along. can you talk about the hand holding and temperature taking but white house is doing that the democrats? >> woodley the white house press briefing and go to the u.s. house where they are dabbling in.

-- gaveling in.

the speaker pro tempore: the house will be in order. the prayer will be offered by the chaplain, father conroy. chaplain conroy: let us pray. loving god, we give you thanks for giving us another day. lord, the people's house returns as a community in connecticut begins to lay their little ones to rest. bless the families of all whose lives were so terribly cut

short with peace and consolation. help them. help us all to have hope in a time of great des lakes. the souls of the just are in the hands of god and no torment shall touch them. we ask your blessing, o lord, upon the blessing of this assembly and upon the leadership. it is on their shoulders the most important negotiations of our time have been placed. give them wisdom, grace, insight and courage to force -- to forge an agreement that allows us all to move forward toward an encouraging future. may all that is done this day be for your greater honor and glory. amen.

the speaker pro tempore: the chair has examined the journal of the last day's proceedings and announces to the house his approval thereof. pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1 the journal stands approved. for what purpose does the gentleman rise? >> mr. speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule 1, dimanned a vote on agreeing to the speaker's approval of the journal. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on agreeing to the speaker's approval of the journal. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it. the gentleman is recognized. >> mr. speaker, i object to the vote on the grounds that a quorum is not present and i make a point of order that a quorum is not present. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20, further proceedings on this question are postponed. the pledge of allegiance will be led by the gentleman from pennsylvania, mr. altmire. mr. altmire: i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

the chair will entertain requests for one-minute speeches. for what purpose does the gentleman rise? mr. mcclintock: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute and to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized and without objection. mr. mcclintock: mr. speaker, before we bid farewell to 2012, i rise today to acknowledge a noteworthy anniversary celebrated just a few weeks ago, the 80th anniversary of the hartford music company's famous song, "i'll fly away." this staple of gospel music was written by albert e. brunley and has been performed by aretha franklin to kayne west to the boston pops. it is published in most church him nationals and it is part of community singings all around america. so mr. speaker, on this

milestone anniversary of the publication of this national treasure and song, let us reflect on the chorus just as he wrote a few decades ago. i'll fly away, o glory, when i die, hallelujah by and by. i'll fly away. and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from ohio rise? >> good afternoon, mr. speaker. i request unanimous consent to address the house for one minute and to revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. kucinich: remember locked into a cultural matrix of thinking which produces violence and we were shocked when its heartbreaking affects emerge. it's us versus them thinking, the enemies, whoever they are. on a global level this type of thinking justifies war and brings a splatter of innocence. nationally it sew seeds the murder. yet, war at home is not inevitable. we have it within our power to re-create america today. are we not the home of the

free, the land of the brave? is it not uniquely american to transcends our woes and to seek a more perfect union? even at the darkest moments we americans can stand bravely for our freedom, mindful of our unity. we must break their mindset and move beyond survival mode through security through cooperation. let us create an organized structured approach to a new cultural of peace at homes and our schools and workplaces. this is what the department of peace is about. let us have a national security and peace at home that includes jobs, housing, mental health care, education, retirement security for all. we are the land of the free, home of the brave, courage and democracy. they are our birthright, our inheritance, our destiny. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from pennsylvania rise? >> i ask unanimous consent to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection.

mr. altmire: mr. speaker, in 15 somedays, a misguided tax -- 15 days, a misguided tax is scheduled to go nor effect. the $30 billion tax will negatively impact an industry that employs over 400,000 people in america, including many in my congressional district and one industry that -- in the country that has a net surplus with foreign trade. in june the house overwhelmingly passed legislation to repeal this ill-advised tax policy and now 18 sdratic senators have sent a letter to senate majority leader reid. this only is providing there is broad bipartisan, bicameral support to do away with the tax. with just two weeks to go until the tax is scheduled to take effect, the medical technology industry has received little guidance about how to comply

with the tax causing significant uncertainty and confusion. as discussions on the fiscal cliff and our nation's economic future progress, a delay in the implementation of the medical device tax should strongly be considered, and i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the time of the gentleman has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from the northern mariana islands rise? mr. sablan: to address the house for one minute and to revise and extend. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. sablan: thank you, mr. speaker. mr. speaker, i rise as many others have to offer my deepest condolences to the children, families of newtown, connecticut. they are enduring a terrible tragedy in the sandy hook elementary school shootings. but merely offering my condolence seems meaningless to me unless we help others from this certainly tragedy. we must keep weapons and

high-capacity clips out of the hands of those who are so dangerous or deranged or diluted that they can snap away innocent lives on a whim. i understand there is a constitutional right to bear arms. i know they'll debate that protection. if we don't take guns out of the hands of people that murder children, then we have just empty words. we owe it to those who died. we owe it to children who are still alive. we must protect our families from gun violence and, mr. speaker, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the time of the gentleman has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from michigan rise? >> request to address the house for one minute. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. the gentleman is recognized. >> thank you, mr. speaker. the michigan legislature shamefully passed so-called right to work bills in a

lame-duck session that insult all michigan workers without public hearings or without listening to the voice of a single citizen. even more shamefully, governor rick snyder signed the bill into law after clearly stating repeatedly that such legislation was not on his legislation. mr. curson: the laws that were in place prior to these acts were crafted by republican governor romney and state senator levin. it raised the tide that brought up all ships. small business thrived, the middle class thrived. good jobs with good benefits spawned world-class hospitals and everything else that comes with a strong economy. governor snyder and his lame duck republicans attempted to justify their acts are simply cover. no citizens group has asked to ram this legislation through, nor has any business group. the deep pocketed special interest groups whose only goal

is to destroy unions and other labor organizations created these devisive law. the right to work is bad for workers, bad for michigan and bad for america. the speaker pro tempore: the time of the gentleman has expired. pursuant to clause 4 of rule 1, the following enrolled bill was signed by the speaker on december 13, 2012. the clerk: h.r. 2838, senate 1998, senate 3542. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house an enrolled bill. the clerk: senate 3315, an act to repeal or modify certain mandates of the government accountability office. the speaker pro tempore: the chair lays before the house sundry communications. the clerk: the honorable the speaker, house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the

rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on december 13, 2012, at 4:14 p.m., that the senate passed senate 3313. with best wishes, i am signed sincerely, karen l. haas. the honorable the speaker, house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, the clerk received the following message from the secretary of the senate on december 14, 2012, at 11:32 a.m., that the senate passed senate 2045, that the senate passed without amendment h.r. 6116. with best wishes i am, signed sincerely, karen l. haas. the honorable the speaker, house of representatives, sir, pursuant to the permission

granted in clause 2-h of rule 2 of the rules of the u.s. house of representatives, i have the honor to transmit a sealed envelope received from the white house on december 14, 2012, at 2:47 p.m., and said to contain a message from the president whereby he transmits the district of columbia's f.y. 2013 budget and financial plan. with best wishes i am, signed sincerely, the karen l. haas, clerk of the house. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will read the message. the clerk: to the congress of the united states, pursuant to my constitutional authority and as contemplated by section 446 of the district of columbia self-government and governmental reorganization act, as amended, in 1989, i am transmitting the district of columbia's fiscal year f.y. 2013 budget and financial plan. this transmittal does not represent an endorsement of the contents of the d.c. government's request.

the proposed f.y. 2013 budget and financial plan reflects the major programatic objectives of the mayor and the council of the district of columbia for f.y. 2013, the district estimates total revenues and expenditures of $11.4 billion. signed, barack obama, the white house. the speaker pro tempore: referred to the committee on appropriations and ordered printed. pursuant to clause 12-a of rule 1, the chair declares the house in recess

>> i think the chalsleng we want to be for every person every hour of the day and we're a mobile society. so the challenge is to make sure that we're on pad, computers, phones as well as the traditional viewing which is in the living now on a wonderful high definition television screen. the other challenge we have obviously is that spectrum is a finite resource and others twhant resource and yet there

is not enough spectrum in the universe to do all video by broad band. so our architecture of one to everyone in a location versus theirs which is one to one, their system will always fail because of just simply the congestion of transmitting video one to one. you can't do that. >> the communicate tors continues its look at the future of television at 8:00 eastern on c-span2. >> if we turn away from the needs of others, we align ourselves with those forces which are bringing about this suffering. >> obesity in this country is

nothing short of a public health crisis. >> i think i just had little antennas go up and told me when somebody had their own agenda. >> so much influence in that office, it would be ashame to waste it. >> i think they serve as a window to what was going on with american women. >> many of the women who were first ladies, they were writers, a lot of them were writers. they wrote books. >> they are in many cases more interesting as human beings than their husbands, if only because they are not first and foremost defined and limited by political ambition. >> dolly was both socially adepartment and politically savvy. >> dolly madison loved every minute of it. ms. monroe hated it. >> you can't woo without

including what women want and what women have to contribute. >> during the statement you were a little breathless and there was too much looking down and i think it was a little too fast, not enough change of pace. >> yes, ma'am. >> probable the most tragic of all of our first ladies. they never should have married. >> she later wrote i myself never made any decisions. i only decided what was important and when to present it to my husband. now you stop and think about how much power that is, it's a lot of power. >> prior -- part of the battle against cancer is to fight the fear that ack any it is disease. >> she transformed the way we look at things and made it

possible for countless people to survive and to flourish as a result. >> i don't know how much presidents have that kind of impact on the way we live our lives. >> just walking around the white house grounds, i am constantly reminded about owl of the people who have lived there before and particularly all of the women. >> first ladies, influence and image. a new series on c-span starting president's day, february 18. >> the information technology and information technology hosted a forum this morning. this was supposed to improve government prucktivet, services and public access through the use of i.. the systems and the web.

this is just over two hours. >> i want to welcome you. i am president of the itif and we have two fantastic panels today with people who were principlely responsible for the passage of the act and its implementation. so i'm going to introduce the first panel. we'll go until ten after 10:00 and we'll go to the second panel and we'll adjourn around 11: 15. the panels are going to be interactive. we're not going to have any opening presentation. let me brother deuce folks. bill is the global director

public sector. he is a leading he has several best selling books. if we can put the man on the moon getting big things done in government. government 2 .0 and he was also a former manager of the texas performance review and has advised governments around the world. kevin is the former counsel homeland affairs when he was working with senator lieberman who tchared committee. currently skeven assistant director at u.s. immigration and custom enforcement ice at the department of homeland security. he spent 14 years on the

committee homeland security and government affairs and was chief of the counsel from 2007 to 2010. he worked on implementing and recommendations of the 9/11 commission act. dan is the executive director of the ibm center for business for government. he oversees practice to benefit government. he led consulting services for ibm strategy. he serves as the chire of the privacy board and vice chair of the spri advisory executive committee and is a cio with the partnership with pub libbling serve. he led a staff in the bush administration in i.. the policy including e gove, private security and budgeting.

>> tom davis is director of federal government affairs for deloit. in 1994 tom was elected to the house. he's also drawn on his past experience as general counsel of prc ink and has built procurement in i.. the issues. the services act and the information act rm all under his leadership in 2002. and finally karen evans is the national director for cyber challenge which is a skills development program focused on the cyber work force. before taking that position, she spent 28 years in federal government service including as the administrator for e

government and information technology. hand a number of accomplishments related to ipb6 . which was about dinlal signatures for the government. >> great panel and thank you all for joining us. as i said a decade ago we passed this act and the president signed it. i think it's important to recognize there were e government efforts before this. the clinton administration was making efforts but the e-government act charged subsequent administration ws doing new things. one of the thinks it created the office of electronic

government which would be responsible for electronic information management and in promoting inner agency cooperation to improve public services. as part of that task it created the cio council. it created an inner agency e.-gove fund. and it created the position of e.-government coordinator which is the c.i.o. position. it created the frame works for accepting e.-snures with the government. it created the management act which davis was the lead person on that. and it created a one stop portal for citizen access. so i want to start with where we got with.

that and i want to start before the act with bill because you were leading president governor bush's efforts in texas and during the campaign i know you worked with governor bush on a number of issues. and i remember the day he announced during the campaign he announced his e. government initiative which was yours. and it was a propose toll create a c.i.o. you want to spend a couple of minutes than background? >> i'm trying to remember but i think we stole some of it from you, rob, at the time. >> i was essentially at the time i think haffs the last presidential campaign where one of the candidates talked about government management. then governor bush gave two speeches on management issues, one in nashville and one in philadelphia and they dealt with everything from the number

of political appoint tees and the titetols all sorts of kind of more won key management issues and they were around the notion of the c.e.o. business type. in texas we did have the e-texas commission and it was a big initiative where we were looking at how do we become one of the better states around e.-dwovement government and there were a lot of volunteers around. that and so the e.-government. some of the proposals for the fund, the c.i.o., if i recall, rob, you had a study around that so we were stealing good ideas from anywhere and this one was originally yours. so it was really one part of it but it was the notion of can we make the federal government better, faster, sheeper through

e-government. and at the time there was a belief in the transformation al elements of e.-government at the time. i think the original idea was for $250 million fund which got cut down pretty radically in the end for those of you that led during the lethchure. it didn't get to where we wanted but it was the first time a candidate had talked about e.-government in the presidential campaign. and from there, kevin and crew took it up. >> thank you. kevin, so nur that situation where you are seing the white house doing things and seing the importance of it. how did you get to the act itself? >> well, there were some

sporadic efforts throughout the government. there was a search engine at the end of the clintoner rafment starting in late 1999, early 2,000, senator lieberman launched an interactive tool which allowed people for the first time to comment on 44 different ideas for e-government which provided an initial basis for our efforts. then lieberman introduced the act and there were two aspects to it. one was streamlining access by citizens for citizens to information services, breakinging through agency stove pipes so the information is organized according to the needs of the citizen. and in order to do that you

need centralized effective leadership. and for that the e-government act legislation created a very strong chief information officer position at o.m.b. that would have exthe record mayor powers to lead inner governmental efforts. that's difficult to do in this down because agency paradigm is have you powerful and congress is organized in those lanes. so in the course of ongoing negotiations which dan can describe as well, we were trying to find the right balance between what we were aspiring to and what was doable. >> thank you. >> dan, you were the administrations person working closely with the house and senate as these bills were being crafted.

can you describe that process and what you were thinking and trying to get done? >> sure. as a career information at the o.m.b. office, it was basically the wush administration came in and the deputy director of o.m.b. called me into his office and said senator lieberman is going to introduce a bill. we think you would be the right person to talk to the staff in the senate and work with the house as the house is working through this and represent the 12r5eugs. and i think it was important to look at a career leader to do this because they were taking a long view and see what was asset of issues we could work on to try to find balance in a number of ways. and a number of activities that were ongoing as kevin described, the first portal there had been a lot of work on digital snures going on for several years.

the bush administration created the posi. all of those were in the mix as we worked through these various issue that is were in the senate bill and we tried to find out where things were cod fying these activities and locking them in for the future would help the country in various ways. and so that was kind of the role that i played as i worked with kevin and we worked with in addition to the house and congressman davis' staff, we worked with ben who now is in the administration at g.s.a. and also with senator thompson's staff who was in the bush administration. it extends as the players

worked through these issues a. and the summer of 2001 into the fall as we moved toward trying to get to a bill that would be passable. >> thank you. congressman davis you were involved in this. you held a number of hearsings and had been thinking about cyber security. you want to describe how that played out in the house? >> i'd be happy to. i left congress undefeated and undieted. i was not chairman of the full committee at the time. i was just a subcommittee at the time. i was also house chirme of the house campaign committee. i was lucky to have some good partners on the house side played lead roles in that. so it was a good group to put politics aside for that. something even in those days was not the normal place. we liked senator lieberman's

bill. as it got shaped in the senate and worked with the administration. a couple of pieces we added on the house side that were important to us, bills we tried to move free standing before and met obstacles along the way. one was federal security management act. it's been a landmark act. frankly it needs some updating now. we had no protocols for what agencies were doing on cyber protections at all. there were no checklists or nothing, just increasing cyber attacks and fiss ma sent the first protocols down. the ironny is that's the last bill in the last decade. it's been tied one privacy battles between different agencies and jurisdiction and nothing has happened even know

the problems continue to mound. we think that was the good first step at the time that we were able to load in the bill was helpful. we sadded the services acquisition reform act. one was allowing companies coming to government and you don't pay us unless we show you savings. there is resistence to this on the part of some members but we were able to load that in at a five year expiration at that point. but it proved its worth and brought some commercial practices into i.. the. so loading that in we thought was an important piece as well. it's often overlooked when you talk about the e-government act. we had great partners there. everybody parked their partisan

hats and worked together. it didn't get loaded until the closing days of the congress but it was a good group effort that i think ten years later has survived the test of time. >> hopefully a model for moving forward with bipartisan coompings. karen, you were the bill created in the senate which mark led, you were mark's predecessor and you were involved at the time when this got handed to you and the president signed it what were you thinking about and how did you see your role in imp tathe. >> at the time i was the chief information officer at the didn't of energy si and the vice chair o.c.i.o. council. so i was the career count part to mark as the director of the c.i.o. of the chair counsel

council. it cod fied the response blingts of what the c.i.o. was supposed to do. you were trying to get things done before they were deck dated to you from o.m.b. we thought it was be a great exchange between the agencies and the executive office of the president about how to go about doing some of these government wide initiatives which one of the key things was there was a big government wide task force that mark had launchinged under his leadership through the office of management and budget. and what that task force dishts finally called the quick silver initiative. but they engaged the political leadership at that point when they first came in. and that was very exciting because what happened was there were groups of people that went around and asked the political leadership in each and ever

department what are the key things that you want to get done during your tenure in this administration that involve information technology, that would change the business processes of your department. what do you think you can get done and from that launched the quick silver initiatives and then launched into the long term types of things. but there were certain program terse around that and it got everybody energized and going in the same way. it put that in place and then put structure around it and said you have to go forward and here are the authorities that you have now to go and implement these class agency type of initiatives. i will tell you that once it was handed to me when i moved up and i didn't actually agree to take the job, i know the president asked me but was one of the big questions was would dan stay. and so dan did stay to help

with the transition. so he was key to the success of the transition between mark and myself. it was overwhelming because of these responsibilities in the act. there were a lot of them. there were a lot of expectations and promise from the act and twode deliver. so it was a lot of work that the c.i.o.'s and the agencies did. if you go online and search for the e-government back to 2002 one of the things that comes up is an o.m.b. document that listed all of the response blingts and what kind of progress you were making. and it was a long list. >> it's a memo this thick that's all color coded that dan wrote we were to implement. there are specific time lines that kevin and his team outlined for making information

available. and i was researching it, going back because somebody just squd me a question this week about community technology centers and asked about i know this is in the e-government act somewhere and there were reports about the digital divide and how to make information accessible. and a lot of the same challenges we talk about today were being talked about ten years ago. it's the technology and the access that's changed. the challenges are still there and a lot of the policy issues are there, they're just now getting accelerated because of the improvement in technology. >> one thing that was overlooked when that act passed is we had fewer than 8% of americans on broad band. there was no 3g network. we did have social networking.

we were pretty an indicated when you think about where we are today. but the visionary saw that it would continue and what it would do. i want to ask kevin but anybody can jump in on this. where do you think we've made the most progress on the act? what have been the biggest benefits over the last decade? >> i will discuss that by discussing the structure of the legislation itself. the parts that senator lieberman worked on was titles one and twofment title one addressed the reorganize shagse of e-government. especially with o.m.b. now the creator of the office now considered the chief information officer was important to driving those initiatives. there were different agencies working on different pieces but somebody had to make them move

together. it did receive funding over the years but greater amounts of funding would have ensured greart successes. but title two had a lot of individual pieces which did give mark and karen a lot to do all at once. and some of those pieces got at the concept of single web sites that when a citizen went online, he or she didn't have to know which agency he was interacting with and it was multiple agencies. regulations.gov was a requirement that all agencies conduct their rule makings online in a single place. one thing that is necessary for people to trust e-government is they trust the privacy of their personal information will be protected and the government act required that that be

drafted and posted online every time there is going to be a new information collection. there was a provision on requiring federal courts to provide greater online accessibility. title two addressed so many different things at once. and i would say that combination of a number of those individual initiatives in title two drove the ball forward by requiring government wide action and e-government administrator provided the leadership that that would happen. >> i would expand ond kevin's point. because of the sproduction of fisma it nables technology advancements. they were part of an overall whole whole. related to that are the

policies. underneath the agency activities. and one of the unsung elements was section 207 with the information policy or 208, it was one of those two. which had a whole range of policies over the next two dwhreers to this day are a lot of policy framework. a lot of infrastructure that recently now drives the invasion agenda and allows us to go forward in a positive way has their birth in e-government and how that came together. >> i would like to follow up a little more on the actual expect cushion of this. so congressman davis talked about and brought up the procurement piece. so that was helpful as we moved forward to because there were new authorities that extended to state and local governments as well.

based on us being able to do that because of the things in title 2, one was recreation.gov and it was saying people tuth experience what they want to do across the nation, put it in and pick up state and local government. but that forces integration down between state and local governments which was envisioned through part of the procurement then we were able to start crafting procurements around the fact we could leverage requirements around a certain business area that was federal, state and local. and then it expanded it out because based on things that dan is talking about from a security perspective we could leverage standard con figure raugses and there were things we did with state and local governments that allow for encrippings and things like that to happen. and we would never have been tible do that if they weren't

integrated. so the administrator had a lot of authorities from planning and budget and recommendationingses all the way through expect cushion with procurements because it was great because it was within one person that allowed you to use all these authorities to make agencies move in the same direction. but then also talk to their state and local government counter parts. >> let me pick up on . that under the federal acquisition reform act you could take the schedules, the federal schedules and use them at the state level. but every you're different groups would come in, people who like selling to their state government didn't want this stuff to go national. and they would buy off a member of the prorpeyations committee and defer it for two years at a time. we were able to apply this to the schedule group schedule. we were able to build products up and down and save money for

state government fs they adopted it but it bruth a con grutety up and down the line. that's do i have do and we settled on that. we would like to str made this broader but there was tremendous operation that have month nopliss selling to government. they didn't want to open up the process. we snuck this in and it's been very helpful. that's what happens when you drop this stuff in the last minute. we kept this thing hanging out for six months it would have been dead. >> there is an advantage of stelingt. >> so we touched a little bit on productivty and i want to start with bill on this. in my view of this, we've done a lot of amazing things but they've been top line which and the bottom line in my view has

been less. it's been hard to reengineer government because of the rules and inability to lay workers off and to transform work. i would like people to comment on that. how much have we done in terms of cost savings and cost savings principlelien driven by productivty. you can eliminate work or eliminate waste and perhaps we've done more of the latter. >> i just finished a study on. that we haven't talked about that but i was looking at technology and productivty and mobile. and the numbers are pretty discouraging. at the same time when private sector productivty has increased up until the mid 1990's the rate of productivty increase was pretty close between the public and private sector. then it started to divert around the late 1990's and it's continued to divert.

public sector productivty has declined over the last decade and private sector productivty has increased by 3% a year. so i think the hope back then was that this would lead to significant cost savings. it was all the hard to figure out how to get the cost out. but i think a number of things happened. first of all, obviously with the huge increases in the budget over that time, the pressure for cost reduction was just not there to any great extent. i think there was a lot of putting lipstick on a pig sort of thing going on where instead of replacing more manual processes and replacing more industrial age processes, they were just put the digital hollywood store front over it

and so they weren't replaced at all so you didn't end one that productivty benefits. this was also the case in the u.k. where they've seen that sort of dwerjens so when you look at the difference between productivty of the public and preist sector, it's technology. private sector has been able to harvest the productivty benefits of technology to take cost out and take it out in a pretty radical way. and that just hasn't happened here. i hold a little bit more hope for mobile in this regard which i think mobile has an opportunity to be more trance formative because people will interact more with government and we've goten smarter about that sort of thing. but we have to start closing down systems which i don't think happened to tay great extent. >> i'll just give you my

experience of an account executive before i came to congress as well. agencies focus on their buments and it is the nature of man that people do not like to -- you get your savings and you don't get the benefit of those savings, they go to somebody who isn't doing the same kind of thing. so the nature of government makes this difficult without some strong leadership at the o.m.b. in government. in the private suck or the it's the exact opposite. so tin sen tives is different. people come in with ways to software testing, improve significantly on savings in productivty. there is just resistence at the beaurocrat i can level because this will cut my people. how can i protect them.

>> i come back than point but is that not partly also a function of the prorpeyations committees and if they had a five year budgeting where they could say if you're a agency division you can cut cost, we'll let you keep a little bit of that? >> well remember you got 12 different prop yations. so each gets their allocation, that's what they get to spend in the that but any savings they make they don't get to spend in their own area too. it's just across the board the way government acts. >> and the other thing here is the way the reward system works. and if you find a team within government that is very productive and invite tive, the way they are rewarded is you give them more work and more budget.

so the way people look at successful teams in the government is if you have a bigger team and bigger budget, that means you've done really well and they are giving you things that could be out of scope. so that system has changed. this could be my nationalization because the e-government never got a lot of funding. the highest we got was 3 million which was exciting. >> you're not bitter about it? >> i'm not. but we did learn about a lot of other tools that have forced to us learn how to make the agencies work learning how to work with congress, learning how to make these other management tools that o.m.b. had at its disposele, to be able to use those officially. every is all excited about the gear up for the new stuff and they forget that you sfill have

to deliver serviceles, existing services. and so the agencies are let off the hook about how the services are delivered, they have to deliver the services. so if you don't cut off, there is a point and this is a promise with all technology. there say blip on your prucktivet that shows cost have to increase because you're running old stuff and new stuff at the same time which and the key is shut down the old stuff. we started tracking it and you see them doing it and managing those cost so that you can show the true savings. if you don't shut down the old system, you are never going to realize the benefits of the new ones. >> and just to continue on that path drawing a parallel from the quick silver to what the current administration is doing in terms of how to make

productivty change happen is a small group of dedicated and skilled staff can make a lot happen. the quick silver task force brought tokg together 24 of these teams. and a lot of change happened. karen was a member and a leader on a number of those teams. now you are seeing in the current administration working are also working with cross agency teams of skilled dedicated staff to make invasion happen within the government. you need to have basically leadership and government structure to lock it in, but you need that dedicated change because the career staff will look at here is another change initiative come -- coming down from top. so you need it at both levels. >> it is easier to do top line

invasion. it's fun and we can get a team and it's pretty cool stuff. but slogging down to the basement to get rid of gs-7's you get resistence. what would be one think you would suggest? perhaps it goes back to bill's point, better production of data. they used to do a good job of tracking agency productivty and now they don't. maybe if we did that and we have all theas wards that omb does for agecies, best cyber security abdomen all of that. seems to me we need an award for best productivty. >> the quick silver initiatives, there were a

couple of things really key about that and the program terps set around they were supposed to be short term deliverable things that made sense. one of the one that is if you looked at it today you would say holy smokes is travel. the government does travel, you had the whole big growth coming out of expeed i can't and to compare rates and everything like that. that would be really easy. and the other thing that would be says you can compete it and get a commercial service in and do the adaptive piece of government travel. what ends up happening as gsa went along and did that procurement t environment we're in because it's highly competitive for this space, the benefits weren't achieved and affecting productivty because

vendors protested the award of one vender. so we had to split it. and it went to two other contractors who had great sales teams but couldn't implement it. so the whole idea of trying to get it and the benefits and productivty, all these ool external forces came and drug it out anded the a split. that's one example. payroll, which seems like that would be easy too. every agency had a payroll function and the idea was consolidate it down, you'd be able to do it and maybe we could outsource it out because it's a function that maybe the government didn't really need to do. there are things that happen been the government that are different than in private industry. for example, we ran into a

whole slew of things they thought would be really easy until they got into the agreements with the v.a. center about how do you do payroll with doctors? they have a big exception. how do you do payroll for big agencies? they have a big exception. you can get an 80% solution which you should implement while you are working out with that 20%, it's different in the government. maybe that last 20% isn't cost effective which would show we're not as productive as private industry, because there are some knew answers in the government and that's the nature of government. >> i think the biggest change that we've seen other countries prucktivet dividends like in australia they have to give back 3% a year.

but i think what would have the biggest impact would be if you had complete transparency around the cost of a lot of the processes where you spend x amount of money around processes and how much they cost. put that there in a transparent way. computers can do the work of 500 loggers. in the legal purprofession, you do not want to go in that direction, but there is transparency where you can see others doing that said they had a choice to do that. we're not doing that same sort of thing right now in government. even in the discovery area, that is an area of tremendous cost

savings. if you put it out there and make it transparent, you would force some of that change. >> we had a way where you took governmental functions -- but congress in their wisdom -- >> they are bid out to do this process the same way we're doing it today except for a little bit less money instead of rethinking how to do it. >> when government had to compete in the private sector, they would come in heavy because they wanted to keep the job. that is really what happened. >> this conversation shows that egovernment means different things to different people, and we're not even talking about the egovernment act. we're talking about a much larger problem.

an act which preceded the act in in ways that were less wasteful. e-government created and then minister, but the principal purpose of the act was online innovation as opposed to i.t. management. they find themselves trying to do both things and do a better job doing i.t., but also trying to spur innovation. you are not going to figure out how to shut down systems and save billions of dollars with the provisions in that bill. some of those provisions would democratize the government, which is inexpensive, providing

information to citizen said their government becomes -- you have problems about who is working in the basement and can we do that more efficiently. when you have americans who can .gov, now igo understand how to access the regulatory process or the single place to go and find out about grants or benefits or recreation. in a way, it does not take billions of dollars off of our appropriations, but the chiefs real savings by making people realize what their taxes are going for. >> let's jump into that because that is a good point, kevin. we have made some progress on

one of the persons of the bill was eight more customer-centric experience. i do not think we have done it all. there is still an enormous amount of -- if you want to find out what technologies are available at the federal labs, no one integrated place you can go and say you are working for optics technology, all the upticks programs in the entire federal laboratories, that does not exist. we have made some progress. where to you think the most barbarous has been made moving to more customer-centric as opposed to bureaucratic-centric? >> that may make a comment, administrations are elected and

have the ball, they have to carry out the laws of congress. give it administration's permanent reorganization authority. i knowed this administration would like get, but all this does it allows administrations to look at how things are operating at bring about those consolidations and changes they think are necessary to pursue the ends of government, and it comes back to congress and is voted up or down. so you do not get into all the jurisdictional battles that make difficult, like with a homeland security, and you start designing this thoroughbred of a coarse and end up with a three-humped camel. that overall puts the ball in administration's hands, where they can look at this and figure out how they can reconfigure it and get information to do it.

they need congressional attention to do that, but they would be able to design it. that is what makes this so difficult, because you have so many fingers in the pie. >> across the last 20 years, your question has unaddressed in previous administrations, where it looked how can we make governments around customer- centric initiatives. the number of those took the saint of you, how to codify that in terms of how the government should operate. in the current administration, looking at the agenda, as well as the cross-agency polls that were subject of the new performance.gov website. all this moves toward doing a

hard thing, working across agencies cannot across boundaries, congressional lines, and it is difficult. it is still difficult. it takes a lot of effort come up action from individuals to view things like making regulations.gov happen, and use the images that are now a part of that fabric of the government and are not seen as these new, novel innovations, but have achieved a life cycle and they are now part of the regular budget. they do not make the daily headlines, and that has been a lot of progress. >> we broke to report breaking down bureaucratic barriers in this wave of e-government. i got an e-mail from a group in a department i will not name, and they were saying, we disappointed -- we are disappointed he did not feature

our web application, because it allows people to access this certain group of services. i looked at it and said about this service to the people, there are services in nine different departments they want to excess, and you have yours, and yours is very, very good, but it does not have other programs in the same department. that to me goes to your challenge, which is everybody loves their agency and wants to optimize it, but -- i wonder if it goes back to where we heard a lot about the injured-agency fund. when we wrote about that initially, 12 years ago, hopefully i can remember, as i recall, the canadians had a fund like that, a serious fund, and it was $500 million on the same level, but you would scale it to the same level, 500 marion

dollars, massively more. should we revisit that? >> there will be varying thoughts from everybody, and a person who lived under the least amount of money in that fund, i think that because we did not have that money available, because that is almost the field of dreams approach. to me, what is the incentive for the agency to actively contribute or actively participate, or where is their skin in the game if somebody else is building it? we have professional media doors in departments and may not be tied up to the leadership, where they have one that is good and they have not tied it into the other nine. when you are cantor reading, what made all of these work is

her congress demanded from omb, that we had to have transparency, and read the accounts were that were coming from this, and the agency had scant in the game because you were taking money away from accounts that have liked luncheon. if there were nine different components that had the same budget, zero and be tapped into all nine and said a portion of that is going over here because this is what we are doing, and you will not build anything new. you will contribute over here because the system one-stop shop for the citizens. that made it worth, because there were other concepts, like the enterprise architecture and what the government should look at and how you should live up all these things -- that was all outlined. it made agencies think about that and say if you are going to take my money, i want something

for it. congress was if you are guaranteed use the money i appropriated for this particular purpose, had a and i want accountability. -- i want accountability for that too. whether they agreed with that and there were a lot of hearings, but if you forced everybody to talk about what they bought at the outcome to look like -- >> let's open it up for comments and questions from the audience. just raise your hand and identify yourself. >> i and a consultant. how much of this can be done with online -- [indiscernbile] c-span.or >> in our original draft, there

is a fair amount about establishing participatory forums, which involved citizens. it depends on what kind of participation you are talking about. you would see that much more than you would have in 2001 in every sphere of government. you see things happening on- line. there is so much more transparency. if this administration is spending money on something, they are putting up on a website tracking where that money goes. how every committee and subcommittee has websites. transparency is a key part of the e-goverment act. you talk about participatory forums, if there is not hate government and for thresher in place, it takes to process that was hidden and available to people who have lawyers and

understood regulatory law, but the rules are the same. you can submit written comments in a particular way, you can do it from home, and you can see what others have contributed. when we did our on land legislative interactive poll, anyone could have submitted a,. there were people from the government, individual employees, who worked submitting comments on legislation, and that made omb nervous because you cannot have an oblique commenting on the decision. the omb got a working group together and got all the agencies to submit a single set of comments, which was suppose to be an informal poll for us to solicit dialogue and interest. i think that is a goal for the

future, to encourage greater citizen input. certainly, comments, engagement, you are seeing that now come on my petitions on the white house website, which is a new thing, and you have to establish government processes for how do we gauge this informant -- input. >> that is the next phase. if there has been experimentation under regulation.gov, you will see more of that in terms of not only regulatory development, but also policy process involvement of citizens at all levels of government. >> smaller governments have moved a lot further. i send has tapered to support torre -- iceland as a

participatory process. estonia. i think it is hard to get it right in -- i remember when they started opening up the comments and got 275,000 at one point for a small agricultural thing, dealing with that. that is where we can it use more advanced text analytics to sort through that stuff quickly. i agreed that policy will be one area -- one thing i've wanted to put out in terms of customer -- i think the biggest gains we see right now are due to the open data movement, with the administration doing with so many data sets out there, and we see billions of dollars worth of data being put out there and

entrepreneurs who are developing crape applications in the health-care arena, transit arena, and that is how we interact with technology, through apps, and that is the movement that will be the most powerful as opposed to get 26 agencies to play well together. >> you mentioned to estonia, which is a model on many things i.t. they have close to 100% digital signature adoption, said they'd vote for national elections on the internet, because they can let the cat who'd you are when you vote. it is striking how far back we are. the second point is that the the innovation, the power behind all the data that the government has is very striking. there is no way to predict that

back in 2002. we did not have a notion of the data sets. itf is doing an event called data innovation day, where we will highlight the benefits of innovation around data come and private and public sectors. next? >> [indiscernbile] i am curious to know you have been following up or doing any studies about how other countries are measuring productivity enhancements from e-government, and if there are better practices. not only provide activity in terms of government , how much it contributes to do citizens and business.

>> i have not found a lot of governments that have done a great job in tracking that. some governments require productivity dividends or a give-back to the equivalent of the finance ministry each year. i think it is a great question about grounding what are the benefits to the private sector, society at large. i developed a model in number of years ago, which looked at the government applications and said how much time does this save, and might it be worth something? that some of the numbers there can be pretty powerful. no governments have felt the need that they had to go through all of that. brandt things like building inspection and regulation and a lot of those areas, you can reduce friction between government and citizens, which

can -- we know what an hour of someone's time is worth. the math is pretty easy, but i have not seen the government trying to systemically deal with that. >> the ocd has done some cross- comparative studies. >> i had to get my driver's license a month ago, and i went there the day before it expired, and started to count the number of people and the average weight and ascribe $10 an hour to their time, and i got to a large number quickly. i guarantee you maryland dmv does not count the wasted time and the value of the maryland citizen, nor do i think the federal or other states do that. >> there are some agencies that calculate that. irs does that, and when they do

their customer services, this administration took and went further with customer satisfaction rates, so the time spent in line, where things are transactional, like our irs, where you call to get forms, they have that quantified. you have labor that has that quantify, social security administration who has been doing this for years, who has an efficiency rate built into what they have to do for their appropriations and have to gain a certain efficiency every year in order to manage their cost structure. some of the agencies that are transactional that interact directly with citizens have models and place where they can do it. but as hard as try to extrapolate that across the board. for example, in the counter- terrorist and area, you can, but it is longer to validate the cost of does. >> i am thinking about irs, last

year i could not get the form i needed online and i had to call an irs office and have it mailed to me. are you kidding me? nailing me a form? there was an effort to count the numbers -- people have talked about counting the numbers of forms that are not in digital format. have we ever done that? >> pueblo, colorado, they actually measure the forms and said gsa still does a distribution if they want it in paper. those forms, they try to track it, but i will steal something from cordesman davis, in the case of irs, the improvement, whether it comes from operators, said there is no competition for me to get that irs form unless you are going to

a tax payer or h and r block or all of the things like that. there was another model started under mark's leader said that try to capitalize on that, that incentivized the people that were doing that in the marketplace to provide that service that could decrease what was happening with the irs and reduce their costs. >> one agency to look at is epa, one of the first federal agencies that have moved toward what is called the mobil first policy. they said our customers are all on mobile devices, that is where people access government more than laptops or desktops today, so we will design our applications and everything based on a mobile device. they will use that starting first, because so many agencies divide applications based on a

desktop model, and how you interact mobile is differently. not make a lot of sense. you'll see a much better feel and have it easy to interact with government about how people interact with government in a mobile world. >> at the stopping point for the first panel, we want to do two things. i want to thank this great panel for their leadership in drafting a bill and getting it implementing it and implement it, and also for your time. if i could thank the first tpanel. we will jump right into the first panel. if the first panel was about the last 10 years, how did it work, this panel is about the next 10 years. one of the big challenges now, one of the things that are

different now from a technology perspective, that is easy, but i can guarantee if you were to do this event 10 years from now, we would say i cannot believe you guys could use 4g phones? that may start with alan balutis, a fellow and director of north american public sector for disco systems,-- cisco systems. he headed the industry advisory council, a founding member of the federal c.i.o council.

he is also a federal computer winner. doug bourgeois is that chief, is a bit of for vmware. prior to that, he is the director of national business center at interior, where he provided business management services government wide, like the ones we talked about earlier. before, he was the cio of the patent and trademark office, and he had several roles at fedex. he has also hosted the vmware's i.t. challenge. mark forman is the first official cio, president and co-

founder of government transaction services inc. he was also the first administration for e-gov, and developed products that reduced administrative burdens, including easy grant filing. and david mihalchik, google's u.s. cloud computing business. he has helped to establish and expand google's cloud computing footprint. he led their efforts to -- and was part of the team that launched google apps. crier, he was a senior .anagemr with accenture

mark, you have had the luxury of being both inside and at the top level thinking about this and implementing it and we have heard about quicksilver and other initiatives you put in place. where do you see the next 10 years? if we did this in 10 years, we accomplish re the, th ment, tell us about the technology changes. >> we are at the cusp of a new productivity model for government. i was excited to hear about the discussion of the glass panel. there are four key elements. first, the recognition by government that information is abundant, open, and non

proprietary. i had an article a few weeks ago that some of you may have seen, fascinated by initials as like the project act m.i.t. we are at a point now where it is not clear about the collection and dissemination of information. you think about the discussion over the unemployment rate and other things. the crisis project, a couple guys with a cluster of servers, $15,000, captures a real time data from the internet on prices. think about this, the way we do the inflation number, people come back three months later, and three months later we see what that rate really was. compare that to that project where they are calculating

differentials are around the world instantaneously. that day that is all on the internet. i use safeway, usave, those prices are on the internet. you wonder, if the government is collecting it, why are we still paper based, and why is the government collecting this? i can get that real time information. people understand that, and that is what real consumer is asian of -- consumerization of i.t. is a bout. -- about. second thing is monetization and shared services. we think of commodities asian like windows, google apps, but the real issue is i.t. has

become a service, and the services are the monetized -- commoditized. government will figure that out in the next two years, and we will understand what is the service that government is going to provide, and how much of that service is a utility that can be highly automated and how much of its is knowledge based, and what -- the third thing is the efficiency gains have to come from distributed input. the productivity of the government employee operating in a silo is a model of the 20th century, not the 21st century. in the 21st century, the model has to be real time assembly of the people that have the insights, and i believe the one metric -- we use this going back to quicksilver, but it goes back years before we talk about it --

response time for government -- how fast does it take for government to make a decision? what are the opportunities to accelerate that? there will be big productivity gains in that. the final thing is the performance breakthroughs her driven by a group insights. it is no longer just competition by agencies. it may not be government that has the insight, but we have to find a way to get a performance breakthrough paradigm, which will come from the committee. >> a few years ago i was talking to the dutch government, and one of the things they did, they embraced this model and a survey of swine farmers how many pigs you have and how many pigs were you putting up for slaughter. there is an online swine portal that tells you every day how many swine had been killed. you

just happen to the database. all those points are great, but that was interesting. a;am. how do we -- alan, how we move into this vision, but there was a much more fluid dated driven model which was still hard for government? >> it is, and just a couple of comments hear on your first panel, a very nice feel to get, aspect to it, but i am disappointed in the sense that after all these years we still focus on this issue of e- goverment. i do not hear anybody talking about e-business. everybody assumes that is the way you do business, online, you do your banking, shopping.

in government, we are still wedded to these old ways of doing business. i think marc mentioned a couple of key drivers. i think there are other things that can be put on the table. one is i have come slowly but steadily toward embracing this fiscal cliff, because i think it will actually drive government toward thinking in transformative ways, which really needs to be done. we have gotten -- we have wrung all the inefficiencies about government by -- a certain school of management. we need to recognize that it is not going to come from or be driven from the federal level.

citizens have more interaction with local government and state government, more with state and federal government. the ways in which they interact with the federal government are extremely limited. so i think we need to turn some of these things around and focus more on high-value applications. i think the quicksilver task force did a wonderful job -- what do citizens want from the government prov? where would they want to see applications made available to them? it is possible in the sense that citizens -- the extent they're satisfied with government at all, they are satisfied more with their e-goverment experiences.

there are things that we can build on, the trust been one of the most critical issues. >> yes, one of the things citizens want is speed. i ordered something the other day online and was at my house in two days. compare that with a federal agency where i was required to eight weeks gom, by, the deadline is missed, and the government missed out on their opportunity. fact that we can get private sector to do something in today's that takes the government eight weeks -- we see that over and over again. one thing that was alluded to is i would imagine in 10 years we will not be talking about the cloud, because we will not be talking about e, it will just be

that clout. the you want to talk about that? >> i think everyone in this room would agree that they did not want to talk about the club now anymore. -- about a cloud that anymore. it is an important note, because there are a couple of things i took away from my years at fedex that were important that led to other successes in my career, and one of them was that in order to drive innovation within a large organization, the culture has to understand that it is not about the i.t. at all, and this is giving to the point that allen just made, it is not about as much of the electronic parts but the business and the mission part of that spirit to tide that point back to the point mark made earlier, which is in order

for this productivity gain to occur, at a wide scale we are talking about, the innovation needs to be focused toward the results that matter, is what i used to say, and in that sense there is good stuff that came out of federal enterprise architecture. one of the things i found useful practicing at that time was the measure framework, which was breaking it down and say you have to keep track of the resources that go in, inputs, you got to keep track of the results, the outcomes, the inefficiency, but at the end of the day, you need a few key measures within that area to keep the effort focused on the end result, which is what is the mission going to gain from all of this stuff? another is the fundamental

shift, because of all these things, because of the wake infrastructure is now being, the commoditized, is being caught up and focused too much on the if fisher -- upon the infrastructure. i work with cio's helping them come to terms with what strategy can be, as a nazism -- which is a mechanism, but most i.t. organizations are not staffed and not led any way conducive to delivery of a service. the most fundamental transformation that needs to occur while happening at the technological level -- we are way beyond that to that

organizations that are leveraging technology for the good of the overall mission. >> we move from a role of making sure the boxes were to making sure the services work. >> exactly, and it is no longer about the box. it is really about the services that the business needs to carry out what the citizens want and what the citizens need and not about the processes from an i.t. perspective, about how can we get the server to implement it. >> do you want to build on that, share some thoughts? >> i.t. agree with so much that has been said -- i agree so much with what has been said. we have seen enterprise technology turned on its head, where once it was a small group of people in a room making

decisions about the technology being used at federal agencies and now we see that has been turned on its end and consumers are driving technology. that is what we witnessed in the last 10 years, and it would have been hard to predict that the consumer device cannot consumer technology used by beck citizens used by the work force would be so influential of the technology decisions being made and the overall technology agenda for government. that is the major trend, major development we look at over the past 10 years, and it is the major to the element that we look at for how to shape the next 10 years moving forward. federal workers and citizens -- they want to work the way that

they are living, they want to have this in technology at work they have at home, because of works, they understand it, we talk about this all the time, but there are employees that the work still to day and they have an easier time managing their kids' soccer games, their daughter's wedding, whenever it is, there poker club -- they have a much easier time doing that than collaborating at work, and that is not the way it should be. we are seeing that go away. we're seeing a disease adopting -- we are seeing agencies adopting -- consumer-great technology, but now consumer- great technology is -- has outstripped what is available in the enterprise role in terms of its performance and capabilities. we see federal agencies adopting cloud computing and

employees getting more powerful technology at lower cost and are able to do the things that they can do at home. over the next 10 years, we will see more of that. when i think about the next 10 years, one of the things in looking back, even over time since i joined google in 2007, we can expect 10 years from now whenever people are most pulsipher sleep complaining about or warning us about today is probably what will be adopted 10 years from now. when we think about all of -- in 2007, i was told i had made a terrible decision. i was going to be working on cloud computing within the

federal government public sector, and people said, do you realize what you have done, because this is never wrong to happen. the government cannot adopt cloud computeing, it will never happen. it has happened, and it has happened across state governments. i think them marked success in 10 years will be how far we have eliminated the gap between when the private sector was adopting technology and the government has adopted technology. >> a few years ago i remember there was a federal agency that put out a tender to create for a contractor to build them and expensive system that would allow them to host chats and

postings, and i thought isn't that facebook? those are free. i do not know who wants to jump in, but part of the challenges is we can take a lot of these great-free applications in the private sector and use them in government, and maybe the cia would need something more higher grade, but is that part of the vision in the next 10 years? >> let me say a key part of understanding -- i fear the government i.t. committee has become the insulator of the bureaucracy rather than the catalyst for transforming, and that is part of the issue. maybe as a community, we are so out of synch with the things

that david is raising, business or social media techniques. i am thinking about derivatives, where today hit the wall when a supervisor [indiscernbile] they had a great contest -- >> and telepedia -- >> at the same time congress had pursued it and gave it a budget, and these guys were doing it with a couple servers, and it cost the government less than $150,000 a year, as i recall.

this large project became a large project. many of you may know that there is a guy from the canadian side who to get his certificate from a training course had to write a paper. he said, we have known how to deal with the problems, yet we keep making the same mistakes. why? that is ultimately the situation we are in. project cannot be more than two years. the deputy secretary of the champions have got to be there. we have to decide it is time to take a new job, and what happens

with the new initiatives, as soon as that leader moves, new people come in and give -- a year from the old folks. the 20 reasons why that was a bad idea. you are thinking, do i want that no risk? i think it makes it hard to adopt these things. at the same time, i look at continued innovations. i would say one reason i have a lot of hope for cloud base technology is vico's it is so low. in the old days you had to make a capital investment.

those were basically capital investments. in the cloud you sign up with your home e-mail address, you are in, so government is trying to figure out how do we enforce our rules? these tools are going to be used. they will be used, and i think the government has got to try to figure this out. >> i would say the positive thing today, if you extract from the comments, the technology is morning prevalent and powerful, reaching more prevalent and powerful, there are pressures to change because of fiscal stres

threats. \ we have a new generation coming into government common- law -- into government and a generation leaving government that in many ways is the transformative change i talked about earlier. as long as you have government where the social security administration still roams the academy, -- still believes the academy, and we recruit and train them in technology i used all those years ago when i was finishing my dissertation. it gives me great hope you have a generation that is not only more comfortable with the technology but is more

collaborative in their decision making style that the perfect storm gives me hope his next decade will bring about dramatic change in the way government interacts with people, and i think we ought to be talking about the way government now changes -- the way government changes. >> you mentioned specifically, the technology and the expertise. the thing that is very exciting to me, one of the things that is happening now because of cloud computing but also because of

other innovations and efficiency is gains from imposts and -- inputs. the infrastructure is a lot easier. tablets are proliferating not just to citizens but to employees. the thing that has not caught up is the middle, which are being used to deliver services, and what i see is the opportunity to glue many of these aspects together, for government to be able to tap into new software development methodologies and models such as cloud source -- crowd sourcing, which do not require them to be government employees at all, plus an allowance retiring employees to tap in when they want but still

controlling citizenship can have access and still tap into distributed knowledge and expertise that can really change how government is developed, and i am talking about taking this $50 million o andrement we are used to rul turn it into 250 that are developed by smaller teams that are more dispersed but to do it in a way that is tying into the expertise the government has in the private sector house and mashing it together for a more efficient, more rapid new model. >> every time i go to my ipad i see it of a button that says the

upgrades you can do. that seems to be the model, upgrades and changing. one thing i worry about, in the private sector when there are big cost pressures the company is facing, they usually have flexibility to take those pressures and adapt. i worry federal government will not have flexibility. it will shrink and do less and not do it as well. some of these things require a little bit of investment. the idea is if you invest now you saved later. are we thinking about that the right way as we move to a more constrained environment, but we ought to be doing more right now? >> this is one of the great paradoxes of government in the last 30 years. from an industry perspective you always think technology fosters

innovation, but you do have to to over the investment honump see the benefits. there are companies that cut their i.t.. it is an improvement in worker productivity, and this is economics 101. you spend more to improve productivity. that ought to be the measure we are looking out, cost of operations. >> and there is a challenge in government when you do this. they came initially to have a trademark office, and that place it is pointed toward now is a real place of innovation in terms of use of telework. there are online search efforts.

we never spoke in terms of productivity for a couple of reasons. one, because we felt congress would take away the money and take it away early as opposed to waiting until later when you can demonstrate to them and also some opposition from within, because it is a unionized, heavily unionized labor force, and almost all of the labour force are attorneys. is subject to strike fear in your heart, a union of lawyers, but i could point to other places in my experience. we never talk about productivity issues because of the pressure from unions and the fear -- they

were just as guilty as this, taking the money away. in the beginning it is often more expensive, and you achieve savings over the long term, but if you take them out in the beginning, you have almost assured yourself of failure in terms of your ability to deliver citizen needs, etc. >> this is going to give me the opportunity to tie back to a comment i made earlier about resources, the of efficiency by which you deliver results and the value to the mission as our results, because there is a little bit of light in that example. we were able 0 look at where our opportunity was for more efficiency but we had available,

which is taking a fledgling electronic filing approach and turning it into an electronic pipeline and business process. in order to do that, we lowered our operations cost 20% in order to lower the hump of investment. in less than 18 months we had gone to an on-line process and save $30 million a year. did that make the pattinson better? probably not, but it certainly made it more of efficient, which was a low hanging fruit at that time and i think it gave away potentially getting the better value overall in terms of a better value. back to the point mark made

earlier, the good news is getting something in return does require a return on investment. because of the way technology has progressed over the last few , there is a much lower cost to innovate. that is not necessarily required anymore. in addition because of features cloud computing has brought on top of this infrastructure, the time to value for that investment is really compressed, so if this project was going to lead to a return of started four years from now when we implement a thing, it is being implemented in a much more compressed fashion. the value to the mission is starting to accrue in four months, five months. both of them are taking this

investment hump and shaving the it. of >> i want to build off of. mark made, which is essentially in this new world of boundaries between this organization and the environment are getting more porous, and a company like procter and gamble, when you think about government you do not think about boundaries. how do we get there in 10 years? what is the opportunitiey for a much more crowded stores provision of problem solving grumman -- crowd source provision of problem solving? into thatcontap

salmon and now people crowd stores government -- how do we tap into that? people crowd source government. how do we get to that where people are proud sourcing? >> one thing is the idea of management, and that has become a huge barrier to moving off the legacy, so being able to do this in a way that integrates with your customers, i think alan mention most of the transactions are not with the citizens. it is starting to change largely because of demographics. be that the transactions were one direction, the money from the federal government. it was the irs. it is now changing for more significant portions of the population that are receiving the money. it is largely the education

department, and the veterans affairs department. the identity will either be -- we have multiple generations. i love the things we are doing with the startup company. let me make this a little bit bigger. up until a few months ago, they decided they did not want to publish how many forms there were. there were over 6000 forms and the federal government. there were over 4000 data sets. how do you go from 6000 data collection forms to 400,000 datacenter is? -- datacenters?

incidentally, over the last few years, there have been five forms. my portion of the world, in the grand arena, you have three pavement agencies. 3/4 of the federal grants, and the system that goes along with a vat is payment management. -- with that is payment management. we try to work with the department to get this rectified.

then, they have to agree on identity. not that they couldn't agree, but it has such a huge ripple effect because there are so many different generations. i think that is step one. >> what do you mean the identity management system? >> the first thing is the policy on identity. is it a rest based or individual based? -- arrest based or individual based? they have found ways to resolve that, but we have education, we have [indiscernible] none of these seemed to have solved this puzzle.

that is number one. we need to deal with this issue of identity. we will see a whole lot more innovation. we see a basis for treating case management, the veterans, the security. so many walls come down once we get there. >> there has been a huge amount of progress. moving forward to adopt this new technology. i think there are summaries and analysts where government is leading or on par with the private sector. even if we sat on this panel 18

months ago, i am not sure any of us would have predicted the agency would be moving away from the platform. even 18 months ago, i am not sure we would predict that from happening. it is possible for the government to adopt this new technology. that is where the technology needs to be moving forward. shortening that loop and the lag time, we look at the history. when the internet and the pc came along, wireless came along, the blackberry came along, the government said no. we can't adopt that. maybe we can use it years on.

the government can use them. this is not an easy problem to solve. the focus needs to be how government can get the benefit of the technology before it is outdated. the terrible program efforts in the history of the government the others are familiar with are the efforts were so much time has been spent and money invested. it took so long, and you can stop the march of time -- can't stop themarch of time. march of time. >> somebody gave me a factoid a while back, the number of workers per gigabyte of storage is an order of magnitude less than the number of data centers

the government has. which comes to the point that we needed data center consolidation. every member of congress will be blocking that. do we need a national base closure commission where it is an upper down vote? can we get there with something less than that? >> i was told there would be no math on the panel. i am still working those fractions. sure. this is what google has focused on. it is what we started, it is what larry did in the garages. we don't expect the government will be there, but that is certainly the direction that all

of the firms we are representing here have lessons that can be learned. i think the principal areas, i get asked many times by representatives in government on how we can innovate like google. what can we learn from what they are doing? either the data centers, the overall philosophy, i think that one is relentless focus on the user. the technology is not serving just the staff. it is about changing the way that the users work, be it citizenry or employees. we had this idea for engineers

to be successful, they need to be uncomfortably excited about what they are doing. and i do think there needs to be that in government as well. we talk about the challenge to break this model and get out of the path of what is acceptable to be done. take on more risk and recognize that the mission of the government is so important. >> consolidation is an area where the government, while getting out aggressively and quite publicly has clearly fallen behind the commercial sector. the data points that i have been some of the customers i have worked with is i have seen now the best practices getting beyond this 30% mark where it is a key component to consolidation. those getting up to 90%, their

savings are more than double of what is happening in the initial phase and the government is still stuck by those numbers. >> can you explain what that really means? >> that is the overall infrastructure utilizing virtual was asian technology as a means of consolidation. -- virtualization technology as a means of consolidation. you can run more stuff on it, which means more efficiency. first, getting past 25%, it is a challenge for the infrastructure. something different, something more needs to be done. i spoke recently with a very large global manufacturing company that makes hardware and

software and all this stuff. they said they got to this sticking point. they looked at their application portfolio and rationalize that. they said we need to retire this, we are going to upgrade those and pushed that up the hill. they saved 2.5 times what they did initially. this is a space where the government has yet to begin to help. >> the data center consolidation discussion, it is a red herring if you don't get the complexity of the legacy of hundreds of thousands of redundant places. we have common services of government paid for by homegrown applications. that is what is driving the

class structure. it is a " -cost of quality issu. all our contracts are essentially labor-based contracts. when you say you will consolidate data centers and you don't get rid of labor-based contracts, you miss the complexity of all these redundant applications. we are buying applications, we are buying people to maintain those applications and run that infrastructure. the complexity of those applications is driven by the fact that they were uniquely developed. you consolidate the data center, you maintain those programs.

you're maintaining a cost structure because you still have to buy the people. when you get to the point where you consolidate applications, you get to take advantage of that. google started that. it was scalable. you get huge economies of scale. the government can't achieve the economy of scale with a data center consolidation because it doesn't want to standardize. it is fairly simple. you put a program on the books, the program has to be able to sustain itself. but whose job is it to consolidate these applications? who will go to congress and ask for the funding?

this is the funny side of data centers. it is that they have got to have sustainability within each program. i think we're going to make it through, figuring out that concept. other concepts being considered by folks on the hill right now. we have good insights and thought leaders, it is really important. >> [inaudible] what are the steps and impediments? how long will it take to get online voting? >> i can be part of that and i

would be happy to share the study with this. understanding the international application leadership, one of them is on identity signatures. one of the proposals we made is that the u.s. government, when any citizen wants to renew their passport, they would have the ability to get with their passport a digital certificate. why would i get one? why would i have application when no one has one? the government can play a role in getting over that chicken and egg thing. i see us a long way away from that. eventually this will happen on its own in an incremental way, but it is a long way away.

>> why i agree, one of the things that we did to enable electronic filing was because of the confidentiality and integrity of the requirements that we had, a digital certificate approach. we were able to get all of the patent attorneys to get their digital certificates. they delegated that because it was too much of a bureaucratic burden for them to be straddled with filing applications myself. they were breaking the trust that the digital certificate actually requires. then we look the other way and say that is fine because it is coming from the law firm anyway. it is a cultural thing, and folks don't necessarily want to change. about the scale of citizens that is a significant challenge from the cultural standpoint. standards need to evolve and

architecture is of the application need to evolve with it. until those things happen, it is not going to happen. but is starting happen from an application standpoint. we are seeing it happen on the commercial side. >> i can say this is the way it is going to happen, but i think electronic voting will be one of the overnight election type of shift. in part because the fed -- industry has not shown is reliable. it is a very rapid emergence implication that will sweep the country where your cellphone as

the heart of your identity for a number of transactions. there will be experimentation. it will be lots of little collections and it will be national. every state will have to have that. at that point, we will see the tipping point occur. >> i don't disagree with any of the panels, but i do think one of the differences is the identity that can only be given by government. lots of identities can be given by our banks. in sweden, they deputize their banks. you have got a credential that the government recognize. there might be ways to do that, but -- >> we have seen presidents do that or the federal government powers the federal reserve.

>> which area do you think we will move in 10 years and make the future strides? education, health? where will citizens use technology to change? >> about the time that they are working, the government commission to uphold and identify, on the part of citizens, their areas of priority which they would like to stabilize. to see government take action first. i think health care was the

first one. we certainly have, with this election, a great difference that will move forward. that is the likely candidate. that is where citizens are interested and a lot of work is being done. in fact, government does have one dedicated to achieve that purpose. that is where i would put my vote. the word big used data, but we have been talking a little bit about it. i wonder if folks will talk about that. he's a the benefit as around a big data or the ability to know how, and much more real time,

disease factors, treatments, and the like. we have a little bit here and there. any thoughts? >> it is difficult to look to the crystal ball, but you can say we will never actually get there. i think the response was consistent with what i was expecting. health care is an area where they will see the benefits because there is so much activity going on in that area. and there is a type of effort that started a long time ago and are now beginning to culminate in changes of how things occur for various reasons. citizens are getting significant -- things are

happening already in a very progressive way, using technology. production today that citizens are getting benefits from. you never know about it, but my point is that 10 years from now, there will be benefits in every area of interaction with government. >> i think there are too many non-market forces operating for the u.s. to see the benefits as much as some of the others. we continue to fall behind in most studies in terms of the outcome. we are investing a boatload. are we going to see anywhere near the commencement movement? i think there are too many non-

market forces. i would like to see us be the global leader. >> there are certainly challenges in that area, you can look at the demographics, you conducted the nature of the delivery system. most of the health care in the country is delivered by physician medical groups. the average age, they are middle-aged and above. trying to imagine we're going to run the food delivery system in this country by a network of corner stores. certainly, there are challenges and the like.

and in terms of the confluence of where citizens are looking for the needs, investments that have been made and the availability. >> i think it will be in the three-four area. it is less encumbered and less partisan. public safety, we see tremendous breaks around big data and is driven as much by a little government as anything. the third thing we have not talked about is education. there is a tremendous amount of untapped research that made sense -- it made it hard for government to tap into. there is so much going on in

technology and virtual classrooms, we are seeing basically tremendous construction in the way that a higher education is being delivered. the legacy approach is unaffordable. there are institutional things to keep that going. the availability of information , it may be the greatest benefit of nasa, not the department of education. and perhaps the before -- the department of energy as well. >> i am very interested in program transparency, open

data, open government. but whatever happens with fiscal negotiations, government agencies are going to be extremely pressed from a budget standpoint. in the short term, it seems that having to double rhine and innovative and old legacy system can't be afforded. how do we overcome the cost pressure of making them accessible? i am interested in comments about the impact and the realities of cost of making things more accessible and open. >> i am fascinated by the trends we have in front of us. the modernization act which, added to that and facilitated improvements. we have pressures that dovetail nicely with modernization. and when you look at the

dramatic increase of investment in the last couple of years, they are largely associated with legacy approaches to creating a future funding stream, or a silo within the bureaucracy. this is a great paradox, right? the limited funds to invest, people are not supporting investing in shared services which would may be cut the cost across the government, but there is no incentive for anyone investment. >> you will have the last word. >> the example of rationalization and the benefits it provides, in that example, this multinational and global company, they started no different from any other organization.

80% of cost went into maintaining some existing stuff. when they got done, when they got through the infrastructure consolidation, the application rationalization, we got to this new point where they changed 60% going into keeping the lights on. they doubled the amount annually that the company gets to put into innovative services, capabilities, bringing things to market. it did not get a bunch of investor money in the process because of that dynamic. they will say i don't have any more money for innovation. they were able to continue to self-fund the savings. >> i encourage you to have a

conversation, but i promised people we would adjourn. first, i want to thank his great panel and the first panel. secondly, itif does an enormous number of interesting small think tanks. they do such a fantastic job, so join me in thanking them for the wonderful work they have done. and also my colleague for putting this together. thank you for coming and i look forward to continuing these conversations in 2013. happy holidays to everybody.

[captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2012] >> the u.s. house is about to gavel in four legislative work. two bills on the calendar, one regarding the pipeline permits for glacier national park. and native american land transfers. those will take place after 6:30 p.m. eastern. our live coverage of the house floor on c-span. order. pursuant to clause 8 of rule

20, the chair will postpone further proceedings today on motions to suspend the rules on which a recorded vote or the yeas and nays are ordered or on which the vote incurs objection under clause 6 of rule 20. record votes on postponed questions will be taken later. for what purpose does the gentleman from utah seek recognition? mr. bishop: i move to suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4606 as amended. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 451, h.r. 4606, a bill to authorize the issuance of right of way permit it was -- for natural gas pipelines in glacier national park and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from utah, mr. bishop, and the gentleman from the mariana islands, mr. is a plan, will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from utah. mr. bishop: i ask that all

members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. bishop: let me also, as we begin this debate, i yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from montana whose bill this is, who will talk about a power company decision that was allowed in 1962 and then the park service determined they couldn't do what they had already done so now it needs to be fix. i yield to the jet from montana. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. rehberg: thank you mr. speaker. thank you to the gentleman from utah for summarizing what this bill does. i rise in support of h.r. 4606 which i have introduced this common sense legislation would permit the necessary maintenance of a natural gas pipeline constructed in 1962. ordinary maintenance of the pipeline which is the sole

source of natural gas for nearly 25,000 residents in the flathead valley of montana is being prevented by red tape. about three and a half miles of the 118-mile pipeline follows u.s. highway 2 through the southwestern border of glacier national park. the national park service is allowed to issue an easement over lands in the park for specific purposes including electric transmission lines and communications. but the specific uses listed don't include natural gas lines so under current law they can't allow maintenance. the law also authorizes the federal government to issue rights of way for natural gas lines, just not in national parks system of this tiny stretch of existing pipeline which is so critical to so many montanans finds itself between a legal rock and bureaucratic hard place. allowing maintenance of the existing pipeline is too important for further delay. not only is it nestled in and

around glacier national park but is also near the fork of the flathead river designated as a wild and scenic river, and the great bay wilderness area. a -- an zend due to lack of maintenance would be devastating. it makes sense for the pipeline to use the existing roadbed for highway 2 in order to minimize the economic impact. my legislation simply solve this is government-made problem by allowing the national park service to allow maintenance on the pipeline. i yield back my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from the mariana islands is recognized. mr. sablan: i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. sablan: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. sablan: h.r. 4606 clarifies that the national park service

may issue right-of-way permits for a natural gas pipeline in glacier national park. the pipeline already exists. the senator introduced this legislation in march of this year. we do not object to this legislation and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves. the gentleman from utah is recognized. mr. bishop: i have only myself as the final speaker over here. i was wondering if there are any other speakers from the minority side? mr. sablan: no, i don't, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from utah is recognized. mr. bishop: thank you, mr. speaker. in closing on this, this is a piece of legislation that is just common sense and blindingly necessary. at risk if it's not passed are 25,000 people, citizens of montana, who would be without this kind of natural gas service as well as glacier national park that would be without this kind of service.

it's it's something that needs to be done, should have been done a long time ago, needs to be changed to allow the national park service to do what it should be doing and i urge my colleagues to support this particular bill. with that, i will yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass h.r. 4606 as amended? those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion -- the gentleman from utah is recognize. mr. bishop: on that i would unfortunately ask for the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: in the opinion of the chair 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended, the bill is passed and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on the table. the gentleman from utah has requested the yeas and nays. those in favor of taking the vote by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until downed. a sufficient number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule

20, further proceedings on this question will be postponed. for what purpose does the gentleman from utah seek recognition? mr. bishop: i move to suspend the rules and pass senate bill 3193. the speaker pro tempore: the clerk will report the title of the bill. the clerk: union calendar number 514, senator 3193, a bill to make technical corrections to the legal description of certain land to be held in trust for the barona band of mission indians and for other purposes. the speaker pro tempore: 3ur sunt to the rule, the gentleman from utah, mr. bishop, and the gentleman from the mariana islands, mr. is a plan, each will control 20 minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from utah. mr. bishop: thank you, mr. speaker. i ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. bishop: i yield myself such time as i may consume. this bill corrects an error

made in 2004 under an act of congress under which land intended to be placed in trust for the barona band of mission indians from california that law that was improperly written, amazing. gave a written legal description of the trust land that contained several mistakes. the unfortunately -- unfortunate result was to put congress on record as saying nonindian land was held in trust. it frustrated the nonindian land and didn't allow the indians to use the land they should have had in trust. this bill clears the title to the nonindian property and confirming the title of the trust land. we held a legislative hearing on the bill which the director

of the bbia and the barona band of indians agree. ipt to commend the efforts of congressman hunter of california who has been instrumental in working with the tribe, sponsor -- and worked with the natural resources committee to bring this bill to its final step before going to the president for final signing. i also commend him on working on the senate bill so they can actually do something over there. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from the mariana islands is recognized. mr. sablan: i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks and yield myself such time as may consume. the speaker pro tempore: without objection, so ordered. mr. sablan: s. 3193, the barona

band of mission indians land transfer clarification act of 2012 clarifies the legal description of land placed in trust for the barona band of igs -- band of mission indians in 2004. it clears title to the property misidentified under existing law. s. 3193 was discharged by the subcommittee on indian and alaska native affairs earlier this month by unanimous consent after having been passed by the full senate in september, also by unanimous consent. this bill is supported by the administration, the tribe, and the stake holders. i too support this legislation to correct congress' error and urge my colleagues to vote in favor of passage and i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from utah is recognized. mr. bishop: once again i'm the only speaker we have over here, i'm prepared to close when the

gentleman from the mariana islands is. mr. sablan: i have no further speakers, i yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman from utah is recognized. mr. bishop: this is another bill that's noncontroversial, solves a problem that should have been solved a long time ago. i urge my colleagues to vote for it and yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. the question is will the house suspend the rules and pass senate 3193. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. in the opinion of the chair, 2/3 being in the affirmative, the rules are suspended and the bill is passed and without objection the motion to reconsider is laid on thible. mr. bishop: i ask for the yeas and nays. the speaker pro tempore: the yeas and nays are requested. those in favor of taking this society by the yeas and nays will rise and remain standing until counted. a sufficient number having risen, the yeas and nays are ordered. pursuant to clause 8 of rule 20, further proceedings on this question will be postponed. pursuant to clause 12a of rule

1rk the chair declares the house in recess until >> and go to our special page on our web site with a live twitter stream of comments. the video of related events and a resource area. that is all at c-span.org/fiscal

cliff . >> i think the challenge for us is that we want, on ever devised, for every person, we are a mobile society. the challenge is to make sure that our paths and phones for traditional viewing that would be in the living room on a high- definition television screen. the other challenge is that the spectrum is a finite resource. the architecture lens to everyone in a location verses there's which is one to one. their system will always fail

because this is a suggestion for transmitting video 1 to 1. >> de communicator's continues its look on the future of television. >> the south carolina governor announced she is appointing a republican congressman to the u.s. senate. it will be the first senator from the south since reconstruction. jim demint is resigning to be the head of a washington think tank. >> good morning, it is a great day in south carolina. a historic day. first of all, we all were saddened and surprised when told us he would not continue in the u.s. senate.

he heritage foundation is a blast. he will lift them to an amazing new level. it is a foundation i have had great respect for and they could not have made a more perfect pick. there is no replacing jim demanint. there is no one that can really carry on that torch. i think that says a lot about him. it says a lot about how he has changed the face of south carolina and that we have a lot to be proud of. i think this is a new day. it is with great pleasure that i am announcing that i am appointing our next u.s. senator to be congressman, tim scott. [applause]

many people ask what went into this decision process. they understand what we need in our business community while we focus on top. he has shown that with the support of the ports. he has shown courage with the fight against the national labor relations board. he has shown it with his fiscal representation and that he knows the value of the dollar. he has stayed consistent with that. it also shows the fact that this man loves the south carolina. he is very aware that when he does affect south carolina and our country. i have no doubt that the entire

state understands that this is the right u.s. senator for our state and our country. it is very important to me as a minority female that congressman scott earned this seat. he earned the seat for the person that he is. he earned the seat for the results he has shown. he earned this seat for what he will do for south carolina and making our country proud. i would like to introduce to you tim scott. >> thank you. thank you. [applause] thank you. thank you all very much. before we get started, this is a great day of celebration in many

ways, but our nation is mourning. i want to take a moment of n ailence momentewtown, -- o moment of silence for newtown, connecticut. i want to say thank you to my lord and savior, jesus christ. [applause] when you start in a single- parent household with him on that worked 16 hours a day, you're looking at a future that did not look as bright. you build a strength that comes from having the appreciation and understanding that it is not about you. it is about your faith, your family, i am thankful to a mom that believes that love has to

come at the end of a switch. along that way, when times got tough, when you fail spanish and english, they don't call you bilingual. they might refer to you -- my mother did not quit on me. they taught me some very basic business principles. and it has served me well. our nation finds a place where we need the backbone. how do we bring enough revenue to solve the problem? if you have a problem with spending, there is not enough revenue to make up for it.

we have a spending problem and not a revenue problem. with $16 trillion in debt, and an annual deficit simply talking about the revenue of the top 2%. you can take all the revenue from the top 2% and you can't close that. it is a challenge. nt has led in a way few others have led. he has been consistent, transparent, and assisting. there is no way to have another jim demint in america. we see jim demint go to a bigger and broader opportunity to conserve america.

i look forward the working with lindsay graham. there is no one else like her. they serve the state incredibly well. he understands foreign affairs like no other. i look forward to learning more about foreign affairs. i have had the privilege of gaining a new family. we don't look alike, but sometimes we do. joe wilson is referred to as a scout master. i am not sure what this is, but it is a wonderful haircut. jeff duncan, tom rice, i have

been afforded one of the greatest opportunities. what made it more meaningful, i look forward to continuing to build on the south climate. citizens throughout this great state of south carolina, the future is incredibly bright for america. we have things to overcome. but boy, does the future looked great. we have done it together and the future will reflect the good opportunities. i want to say to the governor --

from a distance has been incredible. i can't imagine the daily pressures of governing this great state. the arrows that are thrown her way all the time. i can see with clarity, the convention and integrity in the character. south carolina is better because we have ricky haley as our governor. having the opportunity to making sure that our economy continues to hum like an engine and get on the team to make sure that all of america hears the great things about south carolina. [applause]

>> thank you, tim. to our conservative rock star for the state of south carolina and our conservative rock star for the country and the heritage foundation, center jim -- senator jim demint. >> governor, when you say there will never be anyone like me, most of washington says, thank goodness. [laughter] i am excited about what is going on today. one of the few things i am worried about what i was considering leaving the senate was who would replace me. i knew that governor haley would put someone in this seat that we would be proud of and continue to stand for those principles of freedom and opportunity. governor, thank you for your faithfulness to our cause and

your good judgment. tim, i could not be happier today. i can walk away from the senate and knowing that someone is better than i am that will carry the voice of conservatism to the whole country in a way that i could not do. i will keep working with that cause, but you inspired me since i heard you speak in public. our country needs those positive and optimistic voices right now to encourage people that there is a way out of this quagmire of we are in in washington. i know you will inspire a lot of other people, too. i had a mom that understood that the best ideas were at the end of a switch, too. i want to say a few words about

senator graham. sometimes, he's been the bad guy and he's switched around. he's a great senator, as a good job on some many different issues. i have been proud to serve with him and i will work over at the heritage foundation. i cannot be prouder of our state sending folks like this to stand in washington and fight for the right ideas. and a wonderful man of character. it has been a privilege to serve the people of south carolina in the united states senate. we are so thankful for the encouragements over the years.

we are praying for you and i hear people say, what can i do? people want to make a difference and it has inspired me to take that idea a around the country. if we take our case to the american people, we can change what happens in washington. it is two steps forward and one step back. we have changed things that were so parochial that they interfered with our national good. we have been able to get the conversation going in the right direction. they were willing to get engaged, and get involved, and make a difference. most people agree that our country is on an unsustainable course.

gov. mitch daniels said that the policies that are already in place will essentially bring our country down and everyone has to be ready with new infrastructure. the reason i am leaving the senate is because i believe that this idea of taking the case to the american people is something i can do more effectively from the heritage foundation knowing my seat is filled with someone that will continue to take the stance that we need to in the senate. the heritage foundation provided the policies for the reagan administration, the republican revolution, and continues to develop the best ideas and present them all over the country. i have talked to a number of governors. to end up with some kind of

alcohol -- the states are implementing conservative ideas at work. we don't force workers to join unions. the company's move and want to be part of what is happening here. when you get more choices of education, it helps minority children. we can prove it with real research. when states have the right to develop their own energy, the revenue that comes into the government helps build better roads and better schools. when states can control more of the transportation, we can do much better